Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 12

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• My own view of myself was that I was small and innocuous, a marshmallow compared to the others. I was a poor shot with a 22, for instance, and not very good with an ax. It took me a long time to figure out that the youngest in a family of dragons is still a dragon from the point of view of those who find dragons alarming.

  Margaret Atwood

  Dragons, Views, Long

  Margaret Atwood (2002). “Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing”, p.9, Cambridge University Press

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• Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?

  Margaret Atwood

  Teacher, Book, School

  "Margaret Atwood: why Wattpad works" by Margaret Atwood, www.theguardian.com. July 6, 2012.

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• Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win.

  Margaret Atwood

  War, Winning, Thinking

  Margaret Atwood (2015). “Morning in the Burned House”, p.61, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• When we're good, we're very, very good, and when we're bad, we're horrid. This is not news, because we're so much more inventive and we have two hands, the left and the right. That is how we think. It's all over our literature, and it's all over the way we arrange archetypes, the good version, the bad version, the god, the devil, the Abel, the Cain, you name it. We arrange things in pairs like that because we know about ourselves.

  Margaret Atwood

  Thinking, Two, Hands

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• You refuse to own yourself, you permit others to do it for you

  Margaret Atwood

  Self Esteem, Permit, Refuse

  Margaret Atwood (1987). “Selected Poems, 1965-1975”, p.156, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Starlet sex scandal. Giant squid involved.

  Margaret Atwood

  Sex, Squids, Giants

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• You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.

  Margaret Atwood

  Views, Scrooge, Cards

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• There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.

  Margaret Atwood

  Would Be, Holmes, Publication

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• Writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated deep down, by a fear or and fascination with mortality - by a desire to make the risky trip to the underworld and to bring something or someone back from the dead.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Desire, Fascination

  Margaret Atwood (2002). “Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing”, p.156, Cambridge University Press

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• No male writer is likely to be asked to sit on a panel addressing itself to the special problems of a male writer.

  Margaret Atwood

  Special, Males, Problem

  Margaret Atwood (2006). “Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose: 1983-2005”, p.83, Basic Books

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• 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.

  9 Copy quote

• I am not your justification for existence.

  Margaret Atwood

  Existence, Justification

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.122, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There is never only one, of anyone

  Margaret Atwood

  Margaret Atwood (1988). “Cat's eye”, Doubleday, 1989

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• So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with. That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.

  Margaret Atwood

  Fun, Plot, Favors

  Margaret Atwood (2011). “Good Bones and Simple Murders”, p.56, Nan A. Talese

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• It's a lifelong failing: she has never been prepared. But how can you have a sense of wonder if you're prepared for everything? Prepared for the sunset. Prepared for the moonrise. Prepared for the ice storm. What a flat existence that would be.

  Margaret Atwood

  Life, Sunset, Ice

  Margaret Atwood (2014). “Stone Mattress: Nine Tales”, p.16, Anchor

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• I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name; remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me. I want to steal something.

  Margaret Atwood

  Names, Want, Way

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.97, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from.

  Margaret Atwood

  Love, Sex, Lack Of Love

  The Handmaid's Tale ch. 18 (1986)

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• If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending... But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one.

  Margaret Atwood

  Stories, Ifs

  Margaret Atwood (2016). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.63, Random House

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• Somebody has been a complete ratbag all their life and they've gotten away with it, and they die happy and rich, we so much want to believe that they're going off to the halls of judgment, that their heart will be weighed against the feather of truth, that it will be heavy with sin and it will be eaten by a crocodile. It's almost essential to our well-being to have a fallback position like that. It may appear as if you've gotten away with it, but you'll pay for it later.

  Margaret Atwood

  Believe, Heart, Essentials

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• A Paradox, the doughnut hole. Empty space, once, but now they've learned to market even that. A minus quantity; nothing, rendered edible. I wondered if they might be used-metaphorically, of course-to demonstrate the existence of God. Does naming a sphere of nothingness transmute it into being?

  Margaret Atwood

  Food, Space, Doe

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.310, Anchor

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• We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down.

  Margaret Atwood

  Night, Men, Light

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• I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.

  Margaret Atwood

  Love, Sleep, Air

  "Variation on theWord Sleep" l. 27 (1981)

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• The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

  Margaret Atwood

  Reality, Answers, Literature

  FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Jul 13, 2011

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• I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, than at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish t were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one’s life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow. I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.

  Margaret Atwood

  Sorry, Pain, Sunset

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• Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings...but there’s something dead about it, something deserted.

  Margaret Atwood

  Real, Body, Arms

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