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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 24

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We pulled the seeds out and scattered them on their flossy parachutes, leaving only the leathery brownish yellow tongue, soft as the inside of an elbow.

We pulled the seeds out and scattered them on their flossy parachutes, leaving only the leathery brownish yellow tongue, soft as the inside of an elbow.

Margaret Atwood
Yellow, Leaving, Elbows

Canadians and Americans may look alike, but the contents of their heads are quite different. Americans experience themselves, individually, as small toads in the biggest and most powerful puddle in the world. Their sense of power comes from identifying with the puddle. Canadians as individuals may have more power within the puddle, since there are fewer toads in it; it's the puddle that's seen as powerless.

Margaret Atwood
Powerful, United States, Different

The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.

Margaret Atwood
Literature, Great Literature, Myth

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.

Margaret Atwood
Wolf Packs, Stories, Sentimental
Margaret Atwood (2000). “The Blind Assassin”, Random House Large Print Publishing

For every age there is a popular idea about what madness is, what causes it, and how a mad person should look and behave; and it's usually these popular ideas, rather than those of medical professionals, that turn up in songs and stories and plays and books.

Margaret Atwood
Song, Book, Play
"Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For". Speech at the Stratford Festival, September 1997.

A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately.

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

There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.

Margaret Atwood
Would Be, Holmes, Publication

The Human moral keyboard is limited ... there's nothing you can play on it that hasn't been played before. And, my dear Friends, I am sorry to say this, but it has its lower notes.

Margaret Atwood
Sorry, Play, Keyboards

The heart with letters on it shining like a light bulb through the trim hole painted in the chest, art history.

Margaret Atwood
Art, Light, Shining
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Surfacing”, p.43, Simon and Schuster

Whatever the scientists may come up with, writers and artists will continue to portray altered mental states, simply because few aspects of our nature fascinate people so much. The so-called mad person will always represent a possible future for every member of the audience - who knows when such a malady may strike?

Margaret Atwood
Artist, Mad, People
"Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For". Speech at the Stratford Festival, September 1997.

A suicide is both a rebuke to the living and a puzzle that defies them to solve it. Like a poem, suicide is finished and refuses to answer questions as to its final cause.

Margaret Atwood
Suicide, Finals, Answers
Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

I tried for the longest time to find out what deconstructionism was. Nobody was able to explain it to me clearly. The best answer I got was from a writer, who said, 'Honey, it's bad news for you and me.

Margaret Atwood
Philosophy, News, Answers

I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it.

Margaret Atwood
Past, Habit, Quaint
"The Handmaid's Tale". Book by Margaret Atwood, 1985.

for me the novel is a social vehicle, it reflects society.

Margaret Atwood
Social, Novel, Vehicle
Coles Notes Staff, Coles Publishing Company. Editorial Board, Margaret Atwood (1998). “Atwood: Surfacing ; notes”

I'm interested in the Gothic novel because it's very much a woman's form. Why is there such a wide readership for books that essentially say, 'Your husband is trying to kill you'?

Margaret Atwood
Husband, Book, Trying
Margaret Atwood (1990). “Margaret Atwood: Conversations”, Princeton, N.J. : Ontario Review Press

Literature is not only a mirror; it is a map, a geography of the mind.

Margaret Atwood
Mirrors, Mind, Literature

We are silent, considering shortfalls. There's not much time left, for us to become what we once intended. Jon had potential, but it's not a word that can be used comfortably any more. Potential has a shelf-life.

Margaret Atwood
Silent, Used, Shelves
Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

making final judgements about poets, cities or regions on the basis of an anthology is always dangerous: anthologies are mirages created, finally, by their editors.

Margaret Atwood
Editors, Cities, Judgement
Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

I didn't much like it, this grudge-holding against the past.

Margaret Atwood
Past, Grudge
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.201, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

A movie about the past is not the same as the past.

Margaret Atwood
Past
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.235, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Faith is only a word, embroidered.

Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.292, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

His mouth is on me, his hands, I can't wait and he's moving, already, love, it's been so long, I'm alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling and water softly everywhere, never-ending.

Margaret Atwood
Moving, Fall, Hands
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.261, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

What’s with her?” says the painter. “She’s mad because she’s a woman,” Jon says. This is something I haven’t heard for years, not since high school. Once it was a shaming thing to say, and crushing to have it said about you, by a man. It implied oddness, deformity, sexual malfunction. I go to the living room doorway. “I’m not mad because I’m a woman,” I say. “I’m mad because you’re an asshole.

Margaret Atwood
Crush, School, Men
Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

Every night when I go to bed I think, In the morning I will wake up in my own house and things will be back the way they were. It hasn’t happened this morning, either.

Margaret Atwood
Morning, Night, Thinking
Margaret Atwood (2016). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.305, Random House

I have always known that there were spellbinding evil parts for women. For one thing, I was taken at an early age to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Never mind the Protestant work ethic of the dwarfs. Never mind the tedious housework-is-virtuous motif. Never mind the fact that Snow White is a vampire -- anyone who lies in a glass coffin without decaying and then comes to life again must be. The truth is that I was paralysed by the scene in which the evil queen drinks the magic potion and changes her shape. What power, what untold possibilities!

Margaret Atwood
Queens, Lying, Taken
Margaret Atwood (2009). “Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing”, p.127, Hachette UK

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