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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 14

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You're never going to kill storytelling, because it's built into the human plan. We come with it.

You're never going to kill storytelling, because it's built into the human plan. We come with it.

Margaret Atwood
Storytelling, Plans, Storyteller
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Oct 11, 2012

By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, believe you're there, I believe you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are. So I will go on. So I will myself to go on.

Margaret Atwood
Believe, Stories, Goes On
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Nov 19, 2016

There's more than one way to skin a cat, my father used to say; it bothered me, I didn't see why they would want to skin a cat even one way.

Margaret Atwood
Father, Cat, Skins
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Surfacing”, p.144, Simon and Schuster

I felt white, drained of blood, cared for, purified. Peaceful.

Margaret Atwood
Blood, White, Peaceful
Margaret Atwood (2011). “Cat's Eye”, p.465, Anchor

It's a critical fallacy of our times ... that a writer should 'grow,' 'change,' or 'develop.' This fallacy causes us to expect from children or radishes: 'grow,' or there's something wrong with you. But writers are not radishes. If you look at what most writers actually do, it resembles a theme with variations more than it does the popular notion of growth.

Margaret Atwood
Children, Growth, Doe

How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all.

Margaret Atwood
Empathy, Humanity, Easy
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.146, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I am not my childhood,' Snowman says out loud.

Margaret Atwood
Childhood, Snowman, Loud
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.68, Anchor

Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hard-shelled, firmly closed.

Margaret Atwood
Mother, Clams, Cat Eye
Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody--a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules.

Margaret Atwood
Falling In Love, Criminals, Fool
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Year of the Flood”, p.72, Anchor

To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self.

Margaret Atwood
Mirrors, Self, Prison
Margaret Atwood (1987). “Selected Poems II: Poems Selected & New 1976-1986”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Craziness was considered funny, like all other things that were in reality frightening and profoundly shameful.

Margaret Atwood
Reality, Craziness, Frightening
Margaret Atwood (2011). “Cat's Eye”, p.443, Anchor

I have never had any problems with editors who wanted me to change my methods or point of view. I pay a lot of attention to editors, but in a different way. They sometimes catch mistakes and help with the order of poems in a book. I do not underestimate them! Indeed, I have been one myself.

Margaret Atwood
Mistake, Book, Views
"Interview with Margaret Atwood". Interview with Raymond H. Thompson, d.lib.rochester.edu. March 25, 1991.

When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

Margaret Atwood
Dark, Glasses, Confusion
"Alias Grace". Book by Margaret Atwood, www.nytimes.com. September 1996.

One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope. In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive?

Margaret Atwood
Anchors, Church, Alive
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.106, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you.

Margaret Atwood
Fear, Knowing, Temptation
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.195, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

We shouldn't be saying 'Save the planet'; we should be saying: 'Save viable conditions in which people can live.' That's what we're dealing with here.

Margaret Atwood
People, Should, Planets
"Margaret Atwood interview: 'Go three days without water and you don't have any human rights. Why? Because you're dead'" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. November 27, 2010.

Most mothers worry when their daughters reach adolescence but I was the opposite. I relaxed, I sighed with relief. Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.

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

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

Now that I am dead, I know everything.

Margaret Atwood
Knows
Margaret Atwood (2014). “The Penelopiad”, p.20, Faber & Faber

Blank pages inspire me with terror.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Inspire, Pages
Margaret Atwood (1990). “Margaret Atwood: Conversations”, Princeton, N.J. : Ontario Review Press

The true story is vicious and multiple and untrue after all. Why do you need it? Don’t ever ask for the true story.

Margaret Atwood
Needs, Stories, Vicious
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Selected Poems II: 1976 - 1986”, p.68, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There are some virtues to not saying what you think all the time.

Margaret Atwood
Thinking, Silence, Virtue

I have been known to buy e-versions of my books because I was in a hotel room and I needed one right away to look up something in it; very handy for that - you can have it just the next minute; you can press the button and just have it.

Margaret Atwood
Book, Buttons, Looks

I grew up amongst biologists.

Margaret Atwood
Grew Up, Grew, Biologist
"Margaret Atwood Remixes Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” as a Prison Drama". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. September, 2016.

Fear has a smell, as love does.

Margaret Atwood
Fear, Smell, Doe
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Surfacing”, p.122, Simon and Schuster

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