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Margaret Atwood Quotes about Lying

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Every ending is arbitrary, because the end is where you write The end. A period, a dot of punctuation, a point of stasis. A pinprick in the paper: you could put your eye to it and see through, to the other side, to the

Every ending is arbitrary, because the end is where you write The end. A period, a dot of punctuation, a point of stasis. A pinprick in the paper: you could put your eye to it and see through, to the other side, to the beginning of something else. Or, as Tony says to her students, Time is not a solid, like wood, but a fluid, like water or the wind. It doesn't come neatly cut into even-sized length, into decades and centuries. Nevertheless, for our purposes we have to pretend it does. The end of any history is a lie in which we all agree to conspire.

Margaret Atwood
Lying, Eye, Writing

It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography — but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off.

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

As William Gibson says, the future is already here but it's lumpy. It's unevenly distributed. Some people are already living this, the ones on low-lying islands off the coast of India are being swept away, you know, it's already happening to some people. We happen to be very lucky so far.

Margaret Atwood
Lying, Islands, People
Source: www.macleans.ca

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

Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.

Margaret Atwood
Lying, Flower, Recovery
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.276, Anchor

About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives.

Margaret Atwood
Lying, Writing, Poet
Waterstone's Poetry Lecture, Delivered At Hay On Wye, canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca. June, 1995.

A wave of blood goes up to my head, my stomach shrinks together, as if something dangerous has just missed hitting me. It's as if I've been caught stealing, or telling a lie; or as if I've heard other people talking about me, saying bad things about me, behind my back. There's the same flush of shame, of guilt and terror, and of cold disgust with myself. But I don't know where these feelings have come from, what I've done.

Margaret Atwood
Lying, Blood, Talking
Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

Once a month I wake in the night, slippery with terror. I'm afraid, not because there's someone in the room, in the dark, in the bed, but because there isn't. I'm afraid of the emptiness, which lies beside me like a corpse.

Margaret Atwood
Lying, Dark, Night
Margaret Atwood (2011). “Wilderness Tips”, p.189, Anchor

But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest. Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.

Margaret Atwood
Lying, Legs, Remember
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.135, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Soon it will be daybreak. Soon the day will break. I can't stop it from breaking in the same way it always does, and then from lying there broken; always the same day, which comes around again like clockwork. It begins with the day before the day before, and then the day before, and then it's the day itself. A Saturday. The breaking day. The day the butcher comes.

Margaret Atwood
Lying, Broken, Doe
Margaret Atwood (2011). “Alias Grace: A Novel”, p.295, Anchor

Books are frozen voices, in the same way that musical scores are frozen music. The score is a way of transmitting the music to someone who can play it, releasing it into the air where it can once more be heard. And the black alphabet marks on the page represent words that were once spoken, if only in the writer's head. They lie there inert until a reader comes along and transforms the letters into living sounds. The reader is the musician of the book: each reader may read the same text, just as each violinist plays the same piece, but each interpretation is different.

Margaret Atwood
Lying, Book, Air

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

You're dead, Cordelia.' No I'm not. 'Yes you are. You're dead. Lie down.

Margaret Atwood
Lying, Cordelia
Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

Your friend is intellectually honourable," Jimmy's mother would say. "He doesn't lie to himself.

Margaret Atwood
Mother, Lying, Jimmy
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.69, Anchor

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

Plato said that poets should be excluded from the ideal republic because they are such liars. I am a poet, and I affirm that this is true. About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives; I know one of them who has floated at least five versions of his autobiography, none of them true. I of course - being also a novelist - am a much more truthful person than that. But since poets lie, how can you believe me?

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

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