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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 3

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So much better to travel than to arrive.

So much better to travel than to arrive.

Margaret Atwood

Our biggest moral debt is to the environment. Take-take-take, nothing given back.

Margaret Atwood
Debt, Moral, Environment
Source: www.macleans.ca

Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome.

Margaret Atwood
Hero, Scary, Overcoming

You can think clearly only with your clothes on.

Margaret Atwood
Inspiring, Thinking, Clothes
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.143, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.

Margaret Atwood
Change, Mean, Handmaids Tale
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.211, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

She knows herself to be at the mercy of events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy.

Margaret Atwood
Events, Mercy, Knows
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.463, Anchor

All observations of life are harsh, because life is. I lament that fact, but I cannot change it.

Margaret Atwood
Facts, Life Is, Harsh
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Tent”, p.27, Anchor

I’m not sure which is worse: intense feeling, or the absence of it.

Margaret Atwood
Feelings, Intense, Absence

It is better to hope than to mope!

Margaret Atwood
Hope
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Year of the Flood”, p.94, Anchor

I myself discovered many authors through school reading lists and through school anthologies. The positives are: young readers can find the world opening up to them through books they study. The negatives may include bad experiences kids have - if they don't like the book or the teacher, or the way the book is taught.

Margaret Atwood
Teacher, Book, Reading

Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create ever more dangerous messes. Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism.

Margaret Atwood
Greed, Promise, Fuel

The male frog in mating season," said Crake, "makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog, one with superior genes. Small male frogs—it's been documented—discover if they position themselves in empty drainpipes, the pipe acts as a voice amplifier and the small frog appears much larger than it really is." So?" So that's what art is for the artist, an empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.

Margaret Atwood
Art, Powerful, Voice
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.168, Anchor

You meet the same people on the way down that you meet on the way up, but you're going the other way.

Margaret Atwood
People, Way
Interview with Paul D. Miller, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.

Margaret Atwood
Inspirational, Motivational, Inspiring

I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart.

Margaret Atwood
Mean, Together, Stories
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Tent”, p.9, Anchor

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.

Margaret Atwood
Time, Space, Lines
Margaret Atwood (2011). “Cat's Eye”, p.16, Anchor

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

Margaret Atwood
Cute, Family, Girl
Margaret Atwood (1988). “Cat's eye”, Doubleday, 1989

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.

Margaret Atwood
Nature, Spring, Garden
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.277, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

Margaret Atwood
Ignorance, Handmaids Tale, Handmaids
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.56, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner.

Margaret Atwood
Dinner, Welcome, Truth Is
Margaret Atwood (2015). “Morning in the Burned House”, p.61, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Don't wait until you're 'in the mood.' Get into the mood by writing.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Waiting, Mood

Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.

Margaret Atwood
Regret, Loss, Journey
Margaret Atwood (2000). “The Blind Assassin”, Random House Large Print Publishing

Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?

Margaret Atwood
Temptation, Indispensable
Margaret Atwood (2003). “The Penelopiad”, p.80, Canongate Books

More of your brain is involved when reading than it is when you watch television... because you are supplying just about everything... you're a creator.

Margaret Atwood
Reading, Creativity, Brain

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you.

Margaret Atwood
Broken Heart, Lost Love, Divorce
Quoted in Time, 19 Mar. 1973

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