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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 10

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Canada was built on dead beavers.

Canada was built on dead beavers.

Margaret Atwood
Canada, Beavers, Built

Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.

Margaret Atwood
Waiting, Absence
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.276, Anchor

War is what happens when language fails.

Margaret Atwood
War, Empowering, Language
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Robber Bride: Includes the short story 'I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth'”, p.46, Hachette UK

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. ...Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.

Margaret Atwood
Running, Fighting, Thinking
"The Blind Assassin". Book by Margaret Atwood, 2000.

Men are not to be told anything they might find too painful; the secret depths of human nature, the sordid physicalities, might overwhelm or damage them. For instance, men often faint at the sight of their own blood, to which they are not accustomed. For this reason you should never stand behind one in the line at the Red Cross donor clinic.

Margaret Atwood
Pain, Men, Sight
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.23, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

What people want is perfection," said the man. "In themselves." "But they need the steps to it to be pointed out," said the woman. "In a simple order," said the man. "With encouragement," said the woman. "And a positive attitude.

Margaret Atwood
Encouragement, Attitude, Simple

If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.

Margaret Atwood
Female, Saint, Mary
Margaret Atwood (1990). “Margaret Atwood: Conversations”, Princeton, N.J. : Ontario Review Press

When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You're your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too—leave them behind. You don't yet know about the habit they have, of coming back. Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been.

Margaret Atwood
Dream, Moving, Thinking
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Feb 14, 2012

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

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Havens, Ifs

If you want to be a writer, you should go into the largest library you can find and stand there contemplating the books that have been written. Then you should ask yourself, 'Do I really have anything to add?' If you have the arrogance or the humility to say yes, you will know you have the vocation.

Margaret Atwood
Book, Humility, Arrogance
Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

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

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

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

A truth should exist, it should not be used like this. If I love you is that a fact or a weapon?

Margaret Atwood
Truth, Love You, Weapons

Where there's a doctor it's always a bad sign. Even when they are not doing the killing themselves it means a death is close, and in that way they are like ravens or crows.

Margaret Atwood
Mean, Doctors, Ravens
Margaret Atwood (2011). “Alias Grace: A Novel”, p.27, Anchor

Maybe the life I think I'm living is a paranoid delusion...Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.

Margaret Atwood
Thinking, People, Way

­Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.

Margaret Atwood
Pain, Writing, Exercise
"Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2010.

What breaks in daybreak? Is it the night? Is it the sun, cracked in two by the horizon like an egg, spilling out light?

Margaret Atwood
Night, Light, Eggs
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Year of the Flood”, p.22, Anchor

[My favorite word is] and. It is so hopeful.

Margaret Atwood
Favorite Words, Hopeful, Your Favorite
Interview with Rosanna Greenstreet, www.theguardian.com. October 28, 2011.

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.

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

All fat women look the same; they all look 42.

Margaret Atwood
Looks, Fats, Fat Women
"Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves -- our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies.

Margaret Atwood
Mother, Wish, Dolls
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from May 10, 2015

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.

Those who live alone slide into the habit of vertical eating: why bother with the niceties when there's no one to share or censure? But laxity in one area may lead to derangement in all.

Margaret Atwood
May, Slides, Eating
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.365, Anchor

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