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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 23

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Stick a shovel into the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light. Good for trade, we thrive on bones; without them there'd be no stories.

Stick a shovel into the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light. Good for trade, we thrive on bones; without them there'd be no stories.

Margaret Atwood
Light, Stories, Sticks
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.11, Anchor

The thing about delirium is you think it's great, but it actually isn't.

Margaret Atwood
Thinking, Delirium

A non-event ... is better to write about than an event, because with a non-event you can make up the meaning yourself, it means whatever you say it means.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Mean, Events
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.80, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I got into trouble a while ago for saying that I thought the internet led to increased literacy - people scolded me about the shocking grammar to be found online - but I was talking about fundamentals: quite simply, you can't use the net unless you can read.

Margaret Atwood
Talking, Simply You, People
"Margaret Atwood: why Wattpad works" by Margaret Atwood, www.theguardian.com. July 6, 2012.

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television - there wasn't a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.

Margaret Atwood
Reading, Writing, Drawing
"Margaret Atwood on Her New Book MaddAddam". The Oprah magazine Interview, www.oprah.com. September, 2013.

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backwards in time and exist in two places at once.

Margaret Atwood
Time, Moving, Light
Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

I think every age lives in a blend of technology so there's always older ones mixed in with newer ones, and when the new technology goes down, the immediate fallback position is either that technology just before that or one several technologies back.

Margaret Atwood
Technology, Thinking, Age

Was this a betrayal, or was it an act of courage? Perhaps both. Neither one involves forethought: such things take place in an instant, in an eyeblink. This can only be because they have been rehearsed by us already, over and over, in silence and darkness; in such silence, such darkness, that we are ignorant of them ourselves. Blind but sure-footed, we step forward as if into a remembered dance.

Margaret Atwood
Betrayal, Silence, Darkness

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you're going to say, 'Where did we come from, what happens next?' The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

Margaret Atwood
Past, Next, Helping

I look up at the ceiling, tracing the foliage of the wreath. Today it makes me think of a hat, the large-brimmed hats women used to wear at some period during the old days: hats like enormous halos, festooned with fruit and flowers, and the feathers of exotic birds; hats like an idea of paradise, floating just above the head, a thought solidified.

Margaret Atwood
Flower, Thinking, Ideas
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.128, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

No luck was dumb because luck was just another name for miracle.

Margaret Atwood
Names, Miracle, Dumb

I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me.

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

You refuse to own yourself, you permit others to do it for you

Margaret Atwood
Self Esteem, Permit, Refuse
Margaret Atwood (1987). “Selected Poems, 1965-1975”, p.156, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

You aren't sick & unhappy only alive & stuck with it.

Margaret Atwood
Sick, Unhappy, Alive
Margaret Atwood (1987). “Selected Poems: 1965-1975”, p.150, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The central symbol for Canada-and this based on numerous instances of its occurrence in both English and French Canadian literature-is undoubtedly Survival, la Survivance.

Margaret Atwood
Survival, Literature, Canada

at last you, will say (maybe without speaking) (there are mountains inside your skull garden and chaos, ocean and hurricane; certain corners of rooms, portraits of great-grandmothers, curtains of a particular shade; your deserts; your private dinosaurs; the first woman) all i need to know: tell me everything just as it was from the beginning.

Margaret Atwood
Ocean, Grandmother, Garden
Margaret Atwood (1987). “Selected Poems: 1965-1975”, p.39, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There's nothing like a shovel full of dirt to encourage literacy.

Margaret Atwood
Dirt, Literacy, Shovels

I didn't go to school for a full year until I was 12. In the summer I was a wild child in the woods, with no shoes, and in the fall it was back to the city, shoe shops and school.

Margaret Atwood
Summer, Children, Fall

I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka.

Margaret Atwood
Rays, Allan Poe, Bradbury

The objects I chose were designed to hold something, but I didn't fill them up. They remained empty. They were little symbolic shrines to thirst.

Margaret Atwood
Shrines, Littles, Empty
Margaret Atwood (2008). “Moral Disorder and Other Stories”, p.82, Anchor

The story as told in The Odyssey doesn't hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.

Margaret Atwood
Water, Stories, Odyssey
Margaret Atwood (2003). “The Penelopiad”, p.21, Canongate Books

If you're put on a pedestal, you're supposed to behave yourself like a pedestal type of person. Pedestals actually have a limited circumference. Not much room to move around.

Margaret Atwood
Moving, Pedestal, Rooms

I no longer feel I'll be dead by thirty; now it's sixty. I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it. I'm still writing, I'm still writing poetry, I still can't explain why, and I'm still running out of time.

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

I'm from the generation that had the boys' door and the girls' door when you went to school, and you got in big trouble if you went in the wrong one.

Margaret Atwood
Girl, School, Boys

Falling in love, although it resulted in altered body chemistry and was therefore real, was a hormonally induced delusional state, according to him. In addition it was humiliating, because it put you at a disadvantage, it gave the love object too much power. As for sex per se, it lacked both challenge and novelty, and was on the whole a deeply imperfect solution to the problem of intergenerational genetic transfer.

Margaret Atwood
Falling In Love, Sex, Real
Margaret Atwood (2009). “Oryx And Crake”, p.109, Hachette UK

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