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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 22

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But most hearts say, I want, I want, I want, I want. My heart is more duplicitous, though no twin as I once thought. It says, I want, I don't want, I want, and then a pause. It forces me to listen.

But most hearts say, I want, I want, I want, I want. My heart is more duplicitous, though no twin as I once thought. It says, I want, I don't want, I want, and then a pause. It forces me to listen.

Margaret Atwood
Heart, Want, Twins
Margaret Atwood (1987). “Selected Poems II: Poems Selected & New 1976-1986”, p.5, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

As I was whizzing around the United States on yet another demented book tour, getting up at four in the morning to catch planes, doing two cities a day, eating the Pringle food object out of the mini-bar at night as I crawled around on the hotel room floor, too tired even to phone room service, I thought, 'There must be a better way of doing this'.

Margaret Atwood
Morning, Book, Tired

I thought everyone would be familiar with this figure: if I'd studied a thing in school I assumed it was general knowledge. I hadn't yet discovered that I lived in a sort of transparent balloon, drifting over the world without making much contact with it, and that the people I knew appeared to me at a different angle from the one at which they appeared to themselves; and that the reverse was also true. I was smaller to others, up there in my balloon, than I was to myself. I was also blurrier.

Margaret Atwood
School, People, Different

I tend to feel if people say they're going to do something, they will, if given the chance.

Margaret Atwood
People, Chance, Given

I could end this with a moral, as if this were a fable about animals, though no fables are really about animals.

Margaret Atwood
Animal, Fables, Moral

He has been trying to sing Love into existence again And he has failed

Margaret Atwood
Trying, Existence, Has Beens
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Selected Poems II: 1976 - 1986”, p.125, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn't happen, but other planets.

Margaret Atwood
Fiction, Science Fiction, Planets

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our day.

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

You say, The sensed absence of God and the sensed presence amount to much the same thing, only in reverse.

Margaret Atwood
Atheism, Absence, Reverse
Margaret Atwood (2015). “Morning in the Burned House”, p.18, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

If you want what's in the package you should at least know how to get the string off, is what I say.

Margaret Atwood
Want, Should, Strings
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Tent”, p.38, Anchor

The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wrong.

Margaret Atwood
Sleep, Problem, Going To Sleep
"Margaret Atwood On Progress, Fear And Social Media". Interview with Claire Sibonney, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 14, 2013.

Love is the pursuit of shadows.

Margaret Atwood
Broken Heart, Love Is, Shadow

Love was like a steamroller. There was no avoiding it; it went over you and you came out flat.

Margaret Atwood
Broken Heart, Over You, Avoiding
Margaret Atwood (1993). “Wilderness Tips”, Bantam

Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.

Margaret Atwood
Dream, Art, Society
Margaret Atwood (2006). “Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood”

I have a fork and a spoon, but never a knife… as if I’m lacking manual skills or teeth. I have both, however. That’s why I’m not allowed a knife.

Margaret Atwood
Knives, Skills, Teeth

Writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated deep down, by a fear or and fascination with mortality - by a desire to make the risky trip to the underworld and to bring something or someone back from the dead.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Desire, Fascination
Margaret Atwood (2002). “Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing”, p.156, Cambridge University Press

This is the middle of my life, I think of it as a place, like the middle of a river, the middle of a bridge, halfway across, halfway over. I'm supposed to have accumulated things by now: possessions, responsibilities, achievements, experience and wisdom. I'm supposed to be a person of substance.

Margaret Atwood
Responsibility, Thinking, Bridges
Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.

Margaret Atwood
Selfish, Princess, Want

But I keep going on with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story, because after all I want you to hear it, as I will hear yours too if I ever get the chance, if I meet you or if you escape, in the future or in heaven or in prison or underground, some other place. What they have in common is that they're not here. By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I 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.

Margaret Atwood
Believe, Heaven, Stories

Despite their cool poses they wear their cravings on the outside, like the suckers on a squid. They want it all.

Margaret Atwood
Squids, Want, Sucker
Margaret Atwood (1988). “Cat's eye”, Doubleday, 1989

Freedom, like everything else, is relative.

Margaret Atwood
Relative
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.231, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I was kidnapped by literature at a young age and never wanted to be ransomed.

Margaret Atwood
Age, Literature, Young

There's blood, a taste I remember. It tastes of orange popsicles, penny gumballs, red licorice, gnawed hair, dirty ice.

Margaret Atwood
Dirty, Blood, Ice
Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

Here and there are worms, evidence of the fertility of the soil, caught by the sun, half dead; flexible and pink, like lips.

Margaret Atwood
Here And There, Half, Fertility
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It's evening, one of those gray water-color washes, like liquid dust.

Margaret Atwood
Dust, Color, Water
Margaret Atwood (2011). “Cat's Eye”, p.23, Anchor

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