Margaret Atwood Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• A word after a word after a word is power.

  Margaret Atwood

  Inspirational, Life, Reading

  "Spelling". Poem by Margaret Atwood, www.poemhunter.com.

• Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

  Margaret Atwood

  Reading, Believe, Writing

  FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Dec 08, 2014

• ­Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.

  Margaret Atwood

  Pain, Writing, Exercise

  "Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2010.

• Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Thinking, Trying

  FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Jan 22, 2017

• The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.

  Margaret Atwood

  Truth, Writing, Hands

  FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Apr 02, 2013

• Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.

  Margaret Atwood

  Children, Writing, Names

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.43, Anchor

• I write as if I've lived a lot of things I haven't lived.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Havens, Ifs

• You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Writing, Mean

  "Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2010.

• While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me - drawing on my skin - not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Butterfly, Wings

  Margaret Atwood (2011). “Alias Grace: A Novel”, p.69, Anchor

• Writing... is an act of faith: I believe it's also an act of hope, the hope that things can get better than they are.

  Margaret Atwood

  Believe, Writing, Get Better

• If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Perfect, Writers Block

  FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from May 05, 2014

• I never have [suffered writer’s block], although I’ve had books that didn’t work out. I had to stop writing them. I just abandoned them. It was depressing, but it wasn’t the end of the world. When it really isn’t working, and you’ve been bashing yourself against the wall, it’s kind of a relief. I mean, sometimes you bash yourself against the wall and you get through it. But sometimes the wall is just a wall. There’s nothing to be done but go somewhere else.

  Margaret Atwood

  Depressing, Wall, Block

• I wish you good writing and good luck. Even if you've already done the good writing, you'll still need the good luck. It's a shark-filled lagoon out there. Cross your fingers and watch your back.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Good Luck, Sharks

• Things musicals taught me: All your problems will go away if you sing about it.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Going Away, Taught

• It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography — but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off.

  Margaret Atwood

  Lying, Book, Writing

  "Margaret Atwood : Writing Philosophy". Waterstone's Poetry Lecture, Delivered At Hay On Wye, canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca. June 1995.

• You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.

  Margaret Atwood

  Reading, Book, Writing

  "Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2010.

• Good writing takes place at intersections, at what you might call knots, at places where the society is snarled or knotted up.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Might, Knots

  FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Nov 08, 2011

• A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Ratios, Reason

  Margaret Atwood (2006). “Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose: 1983-2005”, p.107, Basic Books

• If you're waiting for the perfect moment, you'll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There's nothing foolproof.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Perfect, Waiting

• For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.... I think it's very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there and wait for a wave, and when it comes it takes you somewhere and you don't know where it'll go.

  Margaret Atwood

  Dream, Writing, Thinking

  "Margaret Atwood On The Internet" by Charley Locke, therumpus.net. July 3, 2012.

• The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Fighting, Racism

  Interview with Marilyn Berlin Snell, www.motherjones.com. July/August 1997.

• Writing poetry is a state of free float.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Poetry, States

  Margaret Atwood (2006). “Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood”

• The reader cannot see into your heart. He will know only what you tell him. Make the blind see your words. Make the hard-hearted feel. Make the deaf hear.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Heart, Blind

• Don't be married to a line or verse if it can't rhyme, fit the meter, or doesn't fit the outline.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Lines, Married

• Make the verses flow together. If a following verse has nothing to do with the previous, you may lose our listener/reader. You want a smooth flow to hear or read, and it's easier to memorize.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Together, May

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