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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 11

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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

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

I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.

Margaret Atwood
Dance, Dancing, Flawless
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Lady Oracle”, p.307, Simon and Schuster

Children were vehicles for passing things along. These things could be kingdoms, rich wedding gifts, stories, grudges, blood feuds. Through children, alliances were forged; through children, wrongs were avenged. To have a child was to set loose a force in the world.

Margaret Atwood
Children, Blood, Alliances
Margaret Atwood (2003). “The Penelopiad”, p.24, Canongate Books

After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? Because it is.

Margaret Atwood
Beautiful, World, Stills
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.371, Anchor

Every novel is-at the beginning-the same opening of a door onto a completely unknown space.

Margaret Atwood
Doors, Space, Novel

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

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)

I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

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

We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups.

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

There's nothing like drawing a thing to make you really see it.

Margaret Atwood
Art, Drawing
Margaret Atwood (2014). “The MaddAddam Trilogy Bundle: The Year of the Flood; Oryx & Crake; MaddAddam”, p.526, Anchor

Roughing it builds a boy's character, but only certain kinds of roughing it.

Margaret Atwood
Character, Boys, Kind
Margaret Atwood (2011). “Wilderness Tips”, p.16, Anchor

Writing is alone, but I don't think it's lonely. Ask any writer if they feel lonely when they're writing their book, and I think they'll say no.

Margaret Atwood
Lonely, Book, Writing
"The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Margaret Atwood". Interview with Gina Frangello, therumpus.net. January 20, 2013.

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

Tell what is yours to tell. Let others tell what is theirs.

Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood (2009). “Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing”, p.105, Hachette UK

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

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist.

Margaret Atwood
Loyalty, Art, Firsts
Interview with Marilyn Berlin Snell, www.motherjones.com. July, 1997.

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

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

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”

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

He doesn't know which is worse, a past he can't regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo.

Margaret Atwood
Past, Looks, Vertigo
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.147, Anchor

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

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

I was sand, I was snow—written on, rewritten, smoothed over.

Margaret Atwood
Snow, Sand, Written
Margaret Atwood (2000). “The Blind Assassin”, Random House Large Print Publishing

People cry at weddings for the same reason they cry at happy endings: because they so desperately want to believe in something they know is not credible.

Margaret Atwood
Believe, People, Want
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.240, Anchor

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