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Margaret Atwood Quotes about Writing

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The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.

Margaret Atwood
Truth, Writing, Hands
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Apr 02, 2013

Good writing takes place at intersections, at what you might call knots, at places where the society is snarled or knotted up.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Might, Knots
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Nov 08, 2011

Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Second, they think somebody's going to publish it. Third, they think somebody's going to read it. Fourth, they think somebody's going to like it. How optimistic is that?

Margaret Atwood
Book, Writing, Optimistic

Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Thinking, Trying
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Jan 22, 2017

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

Margaret Atwood
Reading, Believe, Writing
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Dec 08, 2014

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

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Waiting, Mood

If you're a woman writer, sometime, somewhere, you will be asked: Do you think of yourself as a writer first, or as a woman first? Look out. Whoever asks this hates and fears both writing and women.

Margaret Atwood
Hate, Writing, Thinking
Margaret Atwood (2009). “Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose: 1983-2005”, p.76, Hachette UK

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.

You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.

Margaret Atwood
Reading, Book, Writing
"Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2010.

Things musicals taught me: All your problems will go away if you sing about it.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Going Away, Taught

Ah men, why do you want all this attention? I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutely necessary. What do you have to offer me I can't find otherwise except humiliation? Which I no longer need.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Men, Making Love
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Nov 13, 2015

You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

Margaret Atwood
Book, Writing, Mean
"Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2010.

I wish you good writing and good luck. Even if you've already done the good writing, you'll still need the good luck. It's a shark-filled lagoon out there. Cross your fingers and watch your back.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Good Luck, Sharks

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

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

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

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Fighting, Racism
Interview with Marilyn Berlin Snell, www.motherjones.com. July/August 1997.

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Ratios, Reason
Margaret Atwood (2006). “Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose: 1983-2005”, p.107, Basic Books

While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me - drawing on my skin - not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Butterfly, Wings
Margaret Atwood (2011). “Alias Grace: A Novel”, p.69, Anchor

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist. I don't mean there's never any overlap. You learn things in one area and bring them into another area. But giving a speech against racism is not the same as writing a novel. The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Margaret Atwood
Loyalty, Art, Writing
Source: www.motherjones.com

I write as if I've lived a lot of things I haven't lived.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Havens, Ifs

­Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.

Margaret Atwood
Pain, Writing, Exercise
"Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2010.

For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.... I think it's very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there and wait for a wave, and when it comes it takes you somewhere and you don't know where it'll go.

Margaret Atwood
Dream, Writing, Thinking
"Margaret Atwood On The Internet" by Charley Locke, therumpus.net. July 3, 2012.

Writing is alone, but I don't think it's lonely. Ask any writer if they feel lonely when they're writing their book, and I think they'll say no.

Margaret Atwood
Lonely, Book, Writing
"The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Margaret Atwood". Interview with Gina Frangello, therumpus.net. January 20, 2013.

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