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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 21

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The reason they invented coffins, to lock the dead in, preserve them, they put makeup on them; they didn't want them spreading or changing into anything else. The stone with the name and date was on them to weight them

The reason they invented coffins, to lock the dead in, preserve them, they put makeup on them; they didn't want them spreading or changing into anything else. The stone with the name and date was on them to weight them down.

Margaret Atwood
Makeup, Names, Want
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Surfacing”, p.231, Simon and Schuster

The past is a closed door.

Margaret Atwood
Past, Doors, Closed Doors
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Year of the Flood”, p.101, Anchor

The bell that measures time is ringing

Margaret Atwood
Bells
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.8, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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, Sixteen, Reason Why
"Margaret Atwood : Writing Philosophy". Waterstone's Poetry Lecture, Delivered At Hay On Wye, canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca. June 1995.

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

Snowman wakes before dawn.

Margaret Atwood
Dawn, Snowman
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.367, Anchor

Reading ... changes you. You aren't the same person after you've read a particular book as you were before, and you will read the next book, unless both are Harlequin Romances, in a slightly different way.

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

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

Publishers are in business to make money, and if your books do well they don't care if you are male, female, or an elephant.

Margaret Atwood
Book, Elephants, Males
Margaret Atwood (2006). “Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood”

We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we're so dependent on oil, not just for fuel but also plastic. If plastic vanished, there would be total chaos. We have to think quite carefully about using oil, and its derivatives, because it's not going to be around forever.

Margaret Atwood
Thinking, Oil, Forever
"Margaret Atwood, Speculative Fiction's Apocalyptic Optimist". Interview with Scott Thill, www.wired.com. October 20, 2009.

And sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends have been evasive about it, at the time.

Margaret Atwood
Love, Pain, Past
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.226, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn't write. I started again at 16. And have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Dark, Ideas
"Margaret Atwood: Poet". Interview with Joyce Carol Oates, archive.nytimes.com. May 21, 1978.

Eating is our earliest metaphor, preceding our consciousness of gender difference, race, nationality, and language. We eat before we talk.

Margaret Atwood
Race, Differences, Language
Margaret Atwood (1989). “The Edible Woman”, New Canadian Library

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.

Margaret Atwood
Believe, Writing, Fiction
Margaret Atwood (2006). “Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood”

Books are frozen voices, in the same way that musical scores are frozen music. The score is a way of transmitting the music to someone who can play it, releasing it into the air where it can once more be heard. And the black alphabet marks on the page represent words that were once spoken, if only in the writer's head. They lie there inert until a reader comes along and transforms the letters into living sounds. The reader is the musician of the book: each reader may read the same text, just as each violinist plays the same piece, but each interpretation is different.

Margaret Atwood
Lying, Book, Air

You can mean more than one. You can mean thousands. I'm not in any immediate danger, I'll say to you. I'll pretend you can hear me. But it's no good, because I know you can't.

Margaret Atwood
Mean, Danger, Knows
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.40, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I think the main thing is: Just do it. Plunge in! Being Canadian, I go swimming in icy cold lakes, and there is always that dithering moment. "Am I really going to do this? Won't it hurt?" And at some point you just have to flop in there and scream. Once you're in, keep going. You may have to crumple and toss, but we all do that. Courage! I think that is what's most required.

Margaret Atwood
Hurt, Swimming, Thinking
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Dec 31, 2014

art happens. It happens when you have the craft and the vocation and are waiting for something else, something extra, or maybe not waiting; in any case it happens. It's the extra rabbit coming out of the hat, the one you didn't put there.

Margaret Atwood
Art, Waiting, Crafts
Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

There may not be one Truth - there may be several truths - but saying that is not to say that reality doesn't exist.

Margaret Atwood
Reality, May
Interview with Marilyn Berlin Snell, www.motherjones.com. July, 1997.

Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we're probably not going to see.

Margaret Atwood
Fiction, Sci Fi, Speculative Fiction
"Margaret Atwood, Speculative Fiction's Apocalyptic Optimist". Interview with Scott Thill, www.wired.com. October 20, 2009.

Genres aren't closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

Margaret Atwood
Borders, Stuff, Flow
"Narrative Magazine’s Friday Feature: Margaret Atwood Interview, In Which She Talks About “A Handmaid’s Tale”, “The Year Of The Flood” And Having Fun". Interview with Jo Scott-Coe, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 26, 2011.

I particularly like Twitter, because it's short and can be very funny and informative. It's a little bit like having your own radio program.

Margaret Atwood
Radio, Littles, Program

Within one's own family, money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything.

Margaret Atwood
Monsters, Scrooge, Kind
Interview with Marilyn Berlin Snell, www.motherjones.com. July, 1997.

History, as I recall, was never this winsome, and especially not this clean, but the real thing would never sell: most people prefer a past in which nothing smells.

Margaret Atwood
Real, Past, Smell
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.52, Anchor

I sink down into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing…. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. Inside it is a space, huge as the sky at night and dark and curved like that, though black-red rather than black.

Margaret Atwood
Real, Dark, Night

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