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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 7

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As human beings, we are always torn between individual freedom and the ability of choose our actions, and the need for at least enough social structure so that anarchy, chaos, and warlordery - or the war of all against

As human beings, we are always torn between individual freedom and the ability of choose our actions, and the need for at least enough social structure so that anarchy, chaos, and warlordery - or the war of all against all - can be avoided.

Margaret Atwood
War, Needs, Our Actions

A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.

Margaret Atwood
Long, Mazes, Rats
Margaret Atwood (2012). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.143, Random House

Home is where the heart is, I thought now, gathering myself together in Betty's Luncheonette. I had no heart any more, it had been broken; or not broken, it simply wasn't there any more. It had been scooped neatly out of me like the yolk from a hard-boiled egg, leaving the rest of me bloodless and congealed and hollow. I'm heartless, I thought. Therefore I'm homeless.

Margaret Atwood
Home, Heart, Eggs
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.447, Anchor

Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.

Margaret Atwood
Children, Writing, Names
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.43, Anchor

We're facing growing climate change, more floods, more droughts, more crisis on a planetary level, and the systems we put in place in the twentieth century are just not going to work. We've run out of stuff. Our big problems are going to be energy supplies and food supplies. This is not a right-left issue.

Margaret Atwood
Running, Issues, Growing
Source: progressive.org

You cannot teach somebody to write a masterpiece, but you can certainly teach them how to improve their writing skills. And you can teach them that they can make their own voices more effective by being able to communicate more clearly and forcefully. It makes people feel more capable when they can write - for instance to make a request - of a politician - and when they are able to receive a reply.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, People, Politician
Source: www.washingtonpost.com

But the adjectives change,” said Jimmy. “Nothing’s worse than last year’s adjectives.

Margaret Atwood
Years, Adjectives, Lasts
Margaret Atwood (2014). “The MaddAddam Trilogy Bundle: The Year of the Flood; Oryx & Crake; MaddAddam”, p.247, Anchor

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

Margaret Atwood
Nice, Thinking, People

I don't find the idea of sewing degrading. A thing is degrading when you are forced to do it, through economic reasons or through slavery or some other form of compulsion.

Margaret Atwood
Slavery, Reason, Economic
Source: www.washingtonpost.com

You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn.

Margaret Atwood
Song, Thinking, Trying
Margaret Atwood (2015). “Morning in the Burned House”, p.47, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.

Margaret Atwood
Long, People, Used
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.271, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I am rather saddened at the end of a book. I think most writers find this. It's like a friend departing on a voyage.

Margaret Atwood
Book, Thinking, Saddened
Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Our biggest technology that we ever, ever invented was articulated language with built-out grammar. It is that that allows us to imagine things far in the future and things way back in the past.

Margaret Atwood
Past, Technology, Way
Source: www.slate.com

Screw poetry, it’s you I want, your taste, rain on you, mouth on your skin.

Margaret Atwood
Rain, Skins, Mouths

Forgiving men is so much easier than forgiving women.

Margaret Atwood
Forgiveness, Women, Forgiving
Margaret Atwood (2011). “Cat's Eye”, p.332, Anchor

People dressed in a certain kind of clothing are never wrong. Also they never fart.

Margaret Atwood
People, Kind, Fart
Margaret Atwood (2011). “Alias Grace: A Novel”, p.32, Anchor

I walk away from him. It's enormously pleasing to me, this walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will.

Margaret Atwood
Walking Away, People, Able
Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

In view of the fading animals the proliferation of sewers and fears the sea clogging, the air nearing extinction we should be kind, we should take warning, we should forgive each other Instead we are opposite, we touch as though attacking, the gifts we bring even in good faith maybe warp in our hands to implements, to manoeuvres

Margaret Atwood
Animal, Air, Views
Margaret Atwood (1987). “Selected Poems: 1965-1975”, p.161, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It was exciting to work with director Jennifer Baichwal, who made Manufactured Landscapes and others, on the film of Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. It's called, simply, PAYBACK. Jennifer didn't want to do a transliteration of the book, a kind of illustrated version, but to go into the core of the book: owing and being owed, paying and paying back, on all sorts of levels. So she found real-life, visceral stories that embodied the themes of the book.

Margaret Atwood
Real, Book, Shadow

The short answer to 'Why do you write' is - I suppose I write for some of the same reasons I read: to live a double life; to go places I haven't been; to examine life on earth; to come to know people in ways, and at depths, that are otherwise impossible; to be surprised.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, People, Depth

I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.

Margaret Atwood
Depression, Lying, Stupid
Margaret Atwood (1988). “Cat's eye”, Doubleday, 1989

If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.

Margaret Atwood
Moving, Bridges, Over You

Menopause. A pause while you reconsider men.

Margaret Atwood
Men, Menopause, Pauses
Margaret Atwood (2011). “Wilderness Tips”, p.187, Anchor

The use of "religion" as an excuse to repress the freedom of expression and to deny human rights is not confined to any country or time.

Margaret Atwood
Country, Rights, Expression

The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.

Margaret Atwood
Believe, People, Paper
Margaret Atwood (1997). “Alias Grace”

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