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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 17

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Love's never a fair trade.

Love's never a fair trade.

Margaret Atwood
Love, Trade, Fair Trade

When a man is attacked in print, it's usually for saying what he says; when a woman is attacked in print, it's often for being who she is.

Margaret Atwood
Men, Print
Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

Even an obvious fabrication is some comfort when you have few others.

Margaret Atwood
Comfort, Obvious, Fabrication
Margaret Atwood (2003). “The Penelopiad”, p.85, Canongate Books

The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds.

Margaret Atwood
Mistake, Teenage Love, Lust
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.257, Anchor

I did not know that 'poetess' was an insult, and that I myself would some day be called one. I did not know that to be told I had transcended my gender would be considered a compliment. I didn't know — yet — that black was compulsory. All of that was in the future. When I was sixteen, it was simple. Poetry existed; therefore it could be written; and nobody had told me — yet — the many, many reasons why it could not be written by me.

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

A wave of blood goes up to my head, my stomach shrinks together, as if something dangerous has just missed hitting me. It's as if I've been caught stealing, or telling a lie; or as if I've heard other people talking about me, saying bad things about me, behind my back. There's the same flush of shame, of guilt and terror, and of cold disgust with myself. But I don't know where these feelings have come from, what I've done.

Margaret Atwood
Lying, Blood, Talking
Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.

Margaret Atwood
Mean, Thinking, Accomplishment
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.73, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There's a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That's what writers do when they're good.

Margaret Atwood
Differences, Evoke, Reader
"Double bluff". Interview with Katharine Viner, www.theguardian.com. September 16, 2000.

It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.

Margaret Atwood
Running, Cutting, Given
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Jul 28, 2013

The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.

Margaret Atwood
Way, Be Kind, Bears
Alastair Reynolds, Margaret Atwood, Stephen Baxter, Hannu Rajaniemi, Paul Graham Raven (2012). “Arc 1.1: The Future Always Wins”, p.39, Arc

She knows the rituals, she knows how we're supposed to be behaving...But I think these things are impenetrable and fraudulent, and I can't do them without feeling I'm acting.

Margaret Atwood
Thinking, Feelings, Acting

Americans don't usually have to think about Canadian-American relations, or, as they would put it, American-Canadian relations. Why think about something which you believe affects you so little? We, on the other hand, have to think about you whether we like it or not.

Margaret Atwood
Believe, Thinking, Hands
Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

Karen wasn't hard, she was soft, too soft. A soft touch. Her hair was soft, her smile was soft, her voice was soft. She was so soft there was no resistance. Hard things sank into her, they went right through her, and if she made a real effort, out the other side. Then she didn't have to see them or hear them, or even touch them.

Margaret Atwood
Real, Hair, Voice
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Robber Bride: Includes the short story 'I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth'”, p.48, Hachette UK

Once a month I wake in the night, slippery with terror. I'm afraid, not because there's someone in the room, in the dark, in the bed, but because there isn't. I'm afraid of the emptiness, which lies beside me like a corpse.

Margaret Atwood
Lying, Dark, Night
Margaret Atwood (2011). “Wilderness Tips”, p.189, Anchor

She had her reasons. Not that they were the same as anybody else's reasons.

Margaret Atwood
Reason
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.1, Anchor

He's lost something, some illusion I used to think was necessary to him. He's come to realize he too is human. Or is this a performance, for my benefit, to show me he's up-to-date? Maybe men shouldn't have been told about their own humanity. It's only made them uncomfortable. It's only made them trickier, slier, more evasive, harder to read.

Margaret Atwood
Men, Thinking, Humanity
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Sep 17, 2014

You quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves.

Margaret Atwood
Hands, People, Interest
Interview with Jo Scott-Coe, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 26, 2011.

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.

Margaret Atwood
Past, Echoes, Darkness
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.311, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.

Margaret Atwood
Knowing, People, Too Much
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Sep 11, 2014

Your hand is a warm stone I hold between two words.

Margaret Atwood
Hands, Two, Stones
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Selected Poems II: 1976 - 1986”, p.64, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labeled bones.

Margaret Atwood
Wind, Two, Voice
"The Blind Assassin". Book by Margaret Atwood, September 2, 2000.

Some travelers think they want to go to foreign places but are dismayed when the places turn out actually to be foreign.

Margaret Atwood
Travel, Thinking, Want

When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.

Margaret Atwood
Beautiful, Believe, Past
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There are some women who seem to be born without fear, just as there are people who are born without the ability to feel pain. The painless ones go around putting their hands on hot stoves, freezing their feet to the point of gangrene, scalding the lining of their throats with boiling coffee, because there is no warning anguish. Evolution does not favour them. So too perhaps with the fearless women, because there aren't very many of them around. ... Providence appears to protect such women, maybe out of astonishment.

Margaret Atwood
Pain, Fear, Coffee
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.112, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

No more photos. Surely there are enough. No more shadows of myself thrown by light onto pieces of paper, onto squares of plastic. No more of my eyes, mouths, noses, moods, bad angles. No more yawns, teeth, wrinkles. I suffer from my own multiplicity. Two or three images would have been enough, or four, or five. That would have allowed for a firm idea: This is she. As it is, I'm watery, I ripple, from moment to moment I dissolve into my other selves. Turn the page: you, looking, are newly confused. You know me too well to know me. Or not too well: too much.

Margaret Atwood
Confused, Eye, Ideas
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Tent”, p.23, Anchor

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