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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 31

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Jimmy found himself wishing to make a dent in Crake, get a reaction; it was one of his weaknesses, to care what other people thought of him.

Jimmy found himself wishing to make a dent in Crake, get a reaction; it was one of his weaknesses, to care what other people thought of him.

Margaret Atwood
People, Wish, Weakness
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.73, Anchor

I've never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn't mean they're going to be that way.

Margaret Atwood
Mean, People, May

How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it.

Margaret Atwood
Slides, Easy, Treachery
Margaret Atwood (2014). “The MaddAddam Trilogy Bundle: The Year of the Flood; Oryx & Crake; MaddAddam”, p.595, Anchor

'1984' is not a wonder tale. Not only could it happen, but it has happened, but under different names.

Margaret Atwood
Names, Different, Wonder

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Genre, Mediocre
Interview with David Haglund, www.slate.com. October 17, 2011.

Anyway, maybe there weren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. It never learned, it made the same cretinous mistakes over and over, trading short-term gain for long-term pain.

Margaret Atwood
Pain, Mistake, Long
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.243, Anchor

Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they focus on different areas of life on earth.

Margaret Atwood
Focus, What If, Doe

I have a big following among the biogeeks of this world. Nobody ever puts them in books.

Margaret Atwood
Book, World, Bigs
"Margaret Atwood: 'I have a big following among the biogeeks. 'Finally! Someone understands us!'". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. August 24, 2013.

Canada is a balloon-puncturing country. You are not really allowed to be an icon unless you also make an idiot of yourself.

Margaret Atwood
Country, Icons, Canada
"Margaret Atwood interview: 'Go three days without water and you don't have any human rights. Why? Because you're dead'". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. November 27, 2010.

I think the book you always like best is the one you're about to write.

Margaret Atwood
Book, Philosophical, Writing
Margaret Atwood (2006). “Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood”

Human reason is a pin dancing on the head of an angel, so small is it in comparison to the Divine vastness that encircles us.

Margaret Atwood
Angel, Dancing, Vastness
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Year of the Flood”, p.236, Anchor

Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?

Margaret Atwood
Want, Waste, Handmaids Tale
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.7, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Imagine a famine. Now imagine a piece of bread. Both of these things are real but you happen to be in the same room with only one of them. Put yourself into a different room, that’s what the mind is for.

Margaret Atwood
Real, Mind, Different
Margaret Atwood (2010). “Murder in the Dark”, p.52, New Canadian Library

You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.

Margaret Atwood
Time, Water, Looks
Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

I am not running for mayor yet. But if it comes to be true that people cannot voice an opinion unless they have been elected, then we are no longer in a democracy.

Margaret Atwood
Running, Voice, People

Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been.

Margaret Atwood
Dream, Frozen, Get Away
Margaret Atwood (2000). “The Blind Assassin”, Random House Large Print Publishing

I feel that the task of criticizing my poetry is best left to others (i.e. critics) and would much rather have it take place after I am dead. If at all.

Margaret Atwood
Poetry, Tasks, Criticize

After a year or two of keeping my head down and trying to pass myself off as a normal person, I made contact with the five other people at my university who were interested in writing; and through them, and some of my teachers, I discovered that there was a whole subterranean Wonderland of Canadian writing that was going on just out of general earshot and sight.

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

Like all twenty-one-year-old poets, I thought I would be dead by thirty, and Sylvia Plath had not set a helpful example. For a while there, you were made to feel that, if a poet and female, you could not really be serious about it unless you'd made at least one suicide attempt. So I felt I was running out of time.

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

Gardening is not a rational act. What matters is the immersion of the hands in the earth, that ancient ceremony of which the Pope kissingthe tarmac is merely a pallid vestigial remnant.

Margaret Atwood
What Matters, Hands, Gardening
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.277, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

When women let their hair down, it means either sexiness or craziness or death, the three by Victorian times having become virtually synonymous.

Margaret Atwood
Women, Mean, Hair
"Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For". Speech at the Stratford Festival, September 1997.

Don't be married to a line or verse if it can't rhyme, fit the meter, or doesn't fit the outline.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Lines, Married

Moira was like an elevator with open sides. She made us dizzy.

Margaret Atwood
Dizzy, Sides, Elevators
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.133, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The alcohol smell is on my fingers, cold and remote, piercing like a steel pin going in. It smells like white enamel basins. When I look up at the stars in the nighttime, cold and white and sharp, I think they must smell like that.

Margaret Atwood
Stars, Thinking, White
Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

It's probably a form of childish curiosity that keeps me going as a fiction writer. I ... want to open everybody's bureau drawers and see what they keep in there. I'm nosy.

Margaret Atwood
Curiosity, Fiction, Want
Margaret Atwood (1990). “Margaret Atwood: Conversations”, Princeton, N.J. : Ontario Review Press

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