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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 29

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I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply a vehicle for private expression, but that it also exists for social examination. I firmly

I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply a vehicle for private expression, but that it also exists for social examination. I firmly believe this.

Margaret Atwood
Believe, Expression, Novelists

If I pick up a book with vampires on the cover, I want there to be vampires. If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I want there to be dragons inside the book. Proper labeling. Ethical labeling.

Margaret Atwood
Book, Dragons, Vampire

In the evenings there's been thunder, a distant bumping and stumbling, like God on a sullen binge.

Margaret Atwood
Weather, Evening, Sullen
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.48, Anchor

You're sad because you're sad. It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical. Go see a shrink or take a pill, or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll you need to sleep. Well, all children are sad but some get over it. Count your blessings. Better than that, buy a hat. Buy a coat or a pet. Take up dancing to forget.

Margaret Atwood
Children, Sadness, Sleep
Margaret Atwood (2015). “Morning in the Burned House”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

No matter how much you've been warned, Death always comes without knocking. Why now? is the cry. Why so soon? It's the cry of a child being called home at dusk.

Margaret Atwood
Death, Children, Home
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Year of the Flood”, p.325, Anchor

If a stranger taps you on the ass and says, "How's the little lady today!" you will probably cringe. But if he's an American, he's only being friendly.

Margaret Atwood
Friendly, Littles, Today
Margaret Atwood (2006). “Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood”

Don't let the bastards grind you down. I repeat this to myself but it conveys nothing. You might as well say, Don't let there be air; or Don't be. I suppose you could say that.

Margaret Atwood
Air, Might, Grind
Margaret Atwood (2016). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.447, Random House

If social stability goes pear-shaped, you have a choice between anarchy and dictatorship. Most people will opt for more security, even if they have to give up some personal freedom.

Margaret Atwood
Giving Up, People, Choices

Time folds you in its arms and gives you one last kiss, and then it flattens you out and folds you up and tucks you away until it's time for you to become someone else's past time, and then time folds again.

Margaret Atwood
Kissing, Past, Giving
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Tent”, p.101, Anchor

It's his word against the Commander's, unless he wants to head a posse. Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words.

Margaret Atwood
Doors, Want, Posse
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.181, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

He stops, looks up at this window, and I can see the white oblong of his face. We look at each other. I have no rose to toss, he has no lute. But it's the same kind of hunger.

Margaret Atwood
White, Rose, Looks
Margaret Atwood (2016). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.296, Random House

I tried to visualize my jealousy as a yellowy-brown cloud boiling around inside me, then going out through my nose like smoke and turning into a stone and falling down into the ground. That did work a little. But in my visualization a plant covered with poison berries would grow out of the stone, whether I wanted it to or not.

Margaret Atwood
Fall, Clouds, Poison

When I finally went to school I had to adjust to other girls and learn their fiendish ways. Having learnt them, I turned them on all and sundry.

Margaret Atwood
Girl, School, Way

You fit into me like a hook into an eye a fish hook an open eye

Margaret Atwood
Eye, Hook, Fit
Margaret Atwood (1987). “Selected Poems, 1965-1975”, p.141, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered.

Margaret Atwood
God, Needs, Too Much
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Year of the Flood”, p.326, Anchor

When I am lonely for boys it’s their bodies I miss. I study their hands lifting the cigarettes in the darkness of the movie theaters, the slope of a shoulder, the angle of a hip. Looking at them sideways, I examine them in different lights. My love for them is visual: that is the part of them I would like to possess. Don’t move, I think. Stay like that, let me have that.

Margaret Atwood
Lonely, Moving, Boys
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Jan 01, 2013

Canadians are fond of a good disaster, especially if it has ice, water, or snow in it. You thought the national flag was about a leaf, didn't you? Look harder. It's where someone got axed in the snow.

Margaret Atwood
Ice Water, Snow, Looks

To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self. She is living selflessly, she finds a hole in the stone wall and on the other side of the wall, a voice. The voice comes through darkness and has no face. This voice becomes her mirror.

Margaret Atwood
Wall, Mirrors, Self
Margaret Atwood (1987). “Selected Poems II: Poems Selected & New 1976-1986”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices, or a voice. I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over.

Margaret Atwood
Fear, Lying, Night
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Mar 21, 2015

Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.

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

If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can't, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you'd be a very strange person indeed.

Margaret Atwood
Book, Character, People
"Double bluff". Interview with Katharine Viner, www.theguardian.com. September 16, 2000.

Like many modern poets, I tend to conceal rhymes by placing them in the middle of lines, and to avoid immediate alliteration and assonance in favor of echoes placed later in the poems.

Margaret Atwood
Echoes, Lines, Favors
Margaret Atwood (2006). “Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood”

It is my contention that the process of reading is part of the process of writing, the necessary completion without which writing can hardly be said to exist.

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

The internet is 95 percent porn and spam

Margaret Atwood
Internet, Spam, Percent

Laughter may instruct but it may also conceal, defending the joker against anger and retaliation: a game is only a game.

Margaret Atwood
Laughter, Games, May
Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

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