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Margaret Atwood Quotes about Writing - Page 2

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Writing poetry is a state of free float.

Writing poetry is a state of free float.

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

If you're waiting for the perfect moment, you'll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There's nothing foolproof.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Perfect, Waiting

If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Perfect, Writers Block
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from May 05, 2014

Write down the thoughts and even more, write down a specific line. If you don't, it'll fly away forever.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Forever, Lines

The reader cannot see into your heart. He will know only what you tell him. Make the blind see your words. Make the hard-hearted feel. Make the deaf hear.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Heart, Blind

Blank pages inspire me with terror.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Inspire, Pages
Margaret Atwood (1990). “Margaret Atwood: Conversations”, Princeton, N.J. : Ontario Review Press

It had helped to keep her sane, that writing. Then, when time had begun again and real people had entered it, she'd abandoned it here. Now it's a whisper from the past. Is that what writing amounts to? The voice your ghost would have, if it had a voice?

Margaret Atwood
Real, Writing, Past
Margaret Atwood (2013). “MaddAddam: Book 3 of The MaddAddam Trilogy”, p.282, Anchor

You always think, 'Oh, if only I had a little chalet in the mountains! How great that would be and I'd do all this writing' Except, no, I wouldn't. I'd do the same amount of writing I do now and the rest of the time I'd go stir crazy. If you're waiting for the perfect moment you'll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There's nothing foolproof.

Margaret Atwood
Crazy, Writing, Thinking

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.

Writers are much better behaved nowadays, for a couple of reasons. Once upon a time nobody was thinking of a career, unless you lived in New York, so there wasn't as much pressure to present a respectable exterior. And secondly, there was no social media. So if you were found face down on the floor - people did do that quite a bit; usually men, but not always - or fell through plate glass windows or got into scrapes, it became a rumor, and rumors are hard to pin down.

Margaret Atwood
New York, Couple, Writing

You might 'write from the heart,' but you'd better polish with your brain.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Heart, Brain

Make the verses flow together. If a following verse has nothing to do with the previous, you may lose our listener/reader. You want a smooth flow to hear or read, and it's easier to memorize.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Together, May

Writing is very improvisational. It's like trying to fix a broken sewing machine with safety pins and rubber bands. A lot of tinkering.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Safety Pins, Broken
Margaret Atwood (2006). “Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood”

My family was big on sharing. I guess it was just the way I was brought up. Or maybe, I read those fairy tales in which one good turn elicits another. But in writing, yes, some older writers were kind to me when I was young; although some others were not.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Way, Fairy Tale
Interview with Paul D. Miller, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

Writing... is an act of faith: I believe it's also an act of hope, the hope that things can get better than they are.

Margaret Atwood
Believe, Writing, Get Better

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn't write. I started again at 16. And have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Dark, Ideas
"Margaret Atwood: Poet". Interview with Joyce Carol Oates, archive.nytimes.com. May 21, 1978.

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.

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

Writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated deep down, by a fear or and fascination with mortality - by a desire to make the risky trip to the underworld and to bring something or someone back from the dead.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Desire, Fascination
Margaret Atwood (2002). “Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing”, p.156, Cambridge University Press

A non-event ... is better to write about than an event, because with a non-event you can make up the meaning yourself, it means whatever you say it means.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Mean, Events
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.80, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television - there wasn't a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.

Margaret Atwood
Reading, Writing, Drawing
"Margaret Atwood on Her New Book MaddAddam". The Oprah magazine Interview, www.oprah.com. September, 2013.

I no longer feel I'll be dead by thirty; now it's sixty. I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it. I'm still writing, I'm still writing poetry, I still can't explain why, and I'm still running out of time.

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

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.

Margaret Atwood
Writing, Way, Assuming
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.283, Anchor

It is my contention that the process of reading is part of the process of writing, the necessary completion without which writing can hardly be said to exist.

Margaret Atwood
Reading, Writing, Process
Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

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

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”

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