Atwood Quotes & Sayings

That's what you get for being food. — Margaret Atwood

I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it. — Margaret Atwood

A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women. — Margaret Atwood

The thing about dark skies and rainy days is that, if you wait long enough, the sun will always shine again. — Leah Atwood

You create your own world by your inner attitude, the Gardeners used to say. — Margaret Atwood

Nobody nowhere knows what time it is. — Margaret Atwood

How strange to remember typewriters, with their jammed keys and snarled ribbons and the smudgy carbon paper for copies. — Margaret Atwood

Once they tried to save something, others or their own souls. — Margaret Atwood

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

I define science fiction as fiction in which things happen that are not possible today - that depend, for instance, on advanced space travel, time travel, the discovery of green monsters on other planets or galaxies, or that contain various technologies we have not yet developed. — Margaret Atwood

She longs for tonight, she longs to skip the day that's just begun and plunge headlong into the night as if into a pool; a pool with the moon reflected in it. She longs to swim in liquid moonlight. — Margaret Atwood

I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply a vehicle for private expression, but that it also exists for social examination. I firmly believe this. — Margaret Atwood

She's not extravagant or greedy, she tells herself: all she ever wanted was to be protected by layer upon layer of kind, soft, insulating money, so that nobody and nothing could get close enough to harm her. — Margaret Atwood

Is that what writing amounts to? The voice your ghost would have, if — Margaret Atwood

Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings. Then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines. — Margaret Atwood

if the teenage kids want to carouse, that's where they do it. They make bonfires, and drink too much and smoke dope, and grope around in one another's clothing as if they've just invented it, and smash their parents cars up on the way back to town. — Margaret Atwood

Amanda says if there's something you really want, you can figure out a way to get it. She says being discouraged is a waste of time. I — Margaret Atwood

And he couldn't stand to be nothing, to know himself to be nothing. He needs to be listened to, he needs to be heard. He needs at least the illusion of being understood. — Margaret Atwood

But the adjectives change," said Jimmy. "Nothing's worse than last year's adjectives. — Margaret Atwood

Of course (said Oryx), having a money value was no substitute for love. Every child should have love, every person should have it ... but love was undependable, it came and then it went, so it was good to have a money value, because then at least those who wanted to make a profit from you would make sure you were fed enough and not damaged too much. Also there were many who had neither love nor a money value, and having one of these things was better than having nothing. — Margaret Atwood

The thing about delirium is you think it's great, but it actually isn't. — Margaret Atwood

You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting. — Margaret Atwood

The Adams and the Eves used to say, We are what we eat, but I prefer to say, we are what we wish. Because if you can't wish, why bother? — Margaret Atwood

Also I could hear Amanda's voice: Why are you being so weak? Love's never a fair trade. So Jimmy's tired of you, so what, there's guys all over the place like germs, and you can pick them like flowers and toss them away when they're wilted. But you have to act like you're having a spectacular time and every day's a party. — Margaret Atwood

Maybe acting as if she believes in such a future will help to create it, which is the kind of thing the Gardeners used to say. — Margaret Atwood

I am not your justification for existence. — Margaret Atwood

If he had known unstructured
space is a deluge
and stocked his log house-
boat with all the animals
even the wolves,
he might have floated.
But obstinate he
stated, The land is solid
and stamped,
watching his foot sink
down through the stone
up to his knee.
From Progressive insanities of a pioneer — Margaret Atwood

Money isn't the only thing that must flow and circulate in order to have good value: good turns and gifts must flow and circulate ... for any social system to remain in balance. — Margaret Atwood

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre. — Margaret Atwood

We've learned to see the world in gasps. — Margaret Atwood

I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, than at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish t were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one's life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow. I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it. — Margaret Atwood

Now it's full night, clear, moonless and filled with stars, which are not eternal as was once thought, which are not where we think they are. If they were sounds, they would be echoes, of something that happened millions of years ago: a word made of numbers. Echoes of light, shining out of the midst of nothing. It's old light, and there's not much of it. But it's enough to see by. — Margaret Atwood

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
the edge of the receding glacier
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire — Margaret Atwood

Our fragments made us. — Margaret Atwood

The road to death is a lonely highway, and longer than it apears, even when it leads straight down from the scaffold, by way of a rope; and it's a dark road, with never any moon shining on it, to light your way. — Margaret Atwood

Screw poetry, it's you I want, your taste, rain on you, mouth on your skin. — Margaret Atwood

On one wall there was a recent watercolour - Saint E.O. Wilson of Hymenoptera — Margaret Atwood

I am not a saint or a cripple, I am not a wound; now I will see whether I am a coward. — 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

Just do your duty in silence. When in doubt, when flat on your back, you can look at the ceiling. Who knows what you may see, up there? Funeral wreaths and angels, constellations of dust, stellar or otherwise, the puzzles left by spiders. There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind. Is anything wrong, dear? the old joke went. No, why? You moved. Just don't move. What — Margaret Atwood

The imprint left on her mind by the long famished body that had seemed in the darkness to consist of nothing by sharp crags and angles, the memory of its painfully-defined almost skeletal ribcage, a pattern of ridges like a washboard, was fading as rapidly as any other transient impression on a soft surface. — Margaret Atwood

Kill what you can't save
what you can't eat throw out
what you can't throw out bury
What you can't bury give away
what you can't give away you must carry with you,
it is always heavier than you thought. — Margaret Atwood

Nature is an expert in cost-benefit analysis,' she says. 'Although she does her accounting a little differently. As for debts, she always collects in the long run ... — Margaret Atwood

Can a single ant be said to be alive, in any meaningful sense of the word, or does it only have relevance in terms of its anthill? — Margaret Atwood

It's astonishing how folks can get so worked up over something that doesn't exist. — Margaret Atwood

The proper study of Mankind is Everything. — Margaret Atwood

We love each other, that's true whatever it means, but we aren't good at it; for some it's a talent, for others only an addiction. — Margaret Atwood

There is nothing more onerous than enforced gratitude. — Margaret Atwood

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

Oblivion is increasingly attractive to the young, and even to the middle-aged, since why retain your brain when no amount of thinking can even begin to solve the problem? — Margaret Atwood

not hard-wired to individuate other people in numbers above two hundred, the size of the primal tribe, — Margaret Atwood

I love Johnny (Depp). A lot of the stuff I've done for him stands out for me just because of the relationship and who he is. — Colleen Atwood

I and the girl in the picture have ceased to be the same person. I am her outcome, the result of the life she once lived headlong; whereas she, if she can be said to exist at all, is composed only of what I remember. I have the better view - I can see her clearly, most of the time. But even if she knew enough to look, she can't see me at all. — Margaret Atwood

Nobody dies from the lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from. — Margaret Atwood

If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I want there to be dragons inside the book. Proper labeling. Ethical labeling. I don't want to open up my cornflakes and find that they're full of pebbles ... You need to respect the reader enough not to call it something it isn't. — Margaret Atwood

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it. — Margaret Atwood

I can tell you're admiring my febrility. I know it's appealing, I practice at it; every woman loves an invalid. But be careful. You might do something destructive: hunger is more basic than love. Florence Nightingale was a cannibal you know. — Margaret Atwood

Sucked into the well of knowledge, you could only plummet, learning more and more, but not getting any happier. — Margaret Atwood

God gave unto the Animals A wisdom past our power to see: Each knows innately how to live, Which we must learn laboriously. — Margaret Atwood

My hands are out of practice, my eyes disused. Most of what I do is drawing, because the preparation of the surface, the laborious underpainting and detailed concentration ... are too much for me. I have lost confidence: perhaps all I will ever be is what I am now. — Margaret Atwood

Short forms are returning online. Interactivity is coming back; it was always there in oral storytelling. — Margaret Atwood

Jimmy suspected him of wanting to make Grandmaster, not because it meant anything but just because it was there. — Margaret Atwood

Some things are not meant to be, Leighton Atwood had said the night before. But if they were not meant to be, then why did the forces of destiny keep bringing them together? — Sherry Thomas

Here's a health to our Captain, so gallant and free
Whether stuck on a rock or asleep 'neath a tree
Or rolled in the arms of some nymph of the sea
Which is where we would all like to be, man! — Margaret Atwood

One look at a banana and you can tell it came from outer space. — Margaret Atwood

Red all over the cupboard, mirth rhymes with birth, oh to die of laughter. — Margaret Atwood

Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I'll be dead,' you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar. — Margaret Atwood

I try to conjure, to raise my own spirits, from wherever they are. I need to remember what they look like. I try to hold them still behind my eyes, their faces, like pictures in an album. But they won't stay still for me, they move, there's a smile and it's gone, their features curl and bend as if the paper's burning, blackness eats them. A glimpse, a pale shimmer on the air; a glow, aurora, dance of electrons, then a face again, faces. But they fade, though I stretch out my arms towards them, they slip away from me, ghosts at daybreak. Back to wherever they are. — Margaret Atwood

I need to feel physical pain, to attach myself to daily life. — Margaret Atwood

But it's love that does us in. — Margaret Atwood

You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave — Margaret Atwood

If you can't stop the waves, go sailing. — Margaret Atwood

This could be a college guest room, for the less distinguished visitors; or a room in a rooming house, of former times, for ladies in reduced circumstances. That is what we are now. The circumstances have been reduced; for those of us who still have circumstances. — Margaret Atwood

And she finds it difficult to believe - that a person would love her even when she isn't trying. Trying to figure out what other people need, trying to be worthy. — Margaret Atwood

An unearned income encourages self-pity in those already prone to it. The — Margaret Atwood

The act of making a photograph is less a question of what is being looked at than how. — Margaret Atwood

We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. Nothing — Margaret Atwood

He can't shake the feeling that this place is some sort of pyramid scheme, and that those who fail to understand that will be left empty-handed. But there's no obvious reason for this feeling of his. Maybe he's ungrateful by nature. — Margaret Atwood

It has thrown off its disguise as a meal and has revealed itself to me for what it is, a large dead bird. I'm eating a wing. It's the wing of a tame turkey, the stupidest bird in the world, so stupid it can't even fly any more. I am eating lost flight. — Margaret Atwood

Why? he asked, as if he really didn't know. Maybe he didn't. It wasn't the first time he gave evidence of being truly ignorant of the real conditions under which we (women) lived. — Margaret Atwood

When they're gone out of his head, these words, they'll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been. — Margaret Atwood

I should throw my gold watch
into the ocean and become
timeless. — Margaret Atwood

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

Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are described as equals. If you walk into a cathedral and look at the decorations of early Christianity, there are vines, animals, creatures and birds thriving all over the stonework. — Margaret Atwood

If you want to be a writer, you should go into the largest library you can find and stand there contemplating the books that have been written. Then you should ask yourself, 'Do I really have anything to add?' If you have the arrogance or the humility to say yes, you will know you have the vocation. — Margaret Atwood

Communications technology changes possibilities for communication, but that doesn't mean it changes the inherited structure of the brain. So you may think that you're addicted to online reading, but as soon as it isn't available anymore, your brain will pretty immediately adjust to other forms of reading. It's a habit like all habits. — Margaret Atwood

The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. The difference between lie and lay. Lay is always passive. — Margaret Atwood

There was always an element of melancholy involved in sex. After his indiscriminate adolescence he'd preferred sad women, delicate and breakable, women who'd been messed up and who needed him. — Margaret Atwood

I would pore for hours over the stalls of worn necklaces, sets of gilt spoons, sugar tongs in the shape of hen's feet or midget hands, clocks that didn't work, flowered china, spotty mirrors and ponderous furniture, the flotsam left by those receding centuries in which, more and more, I was living. — Margaret Atwood

Suddenly revenge is so close he can actually taste it. It tastes like steak, rare. — Margaret Atwood

Who is this Fuck?" says Abraham Lincoln. "Why is he talking to this Fuck? That is not the name of anyone here. — Margaret Atwood

The choices that bedevil the writer bedevil the translator ten times over. — Margaret Atwood

Like the trains, she's never on time and always departing. — Margaret Atwood

A hot wind was blowing around my head, the strands of my hair lifting and swirling in it, like ink spilled in water. — Margaret Atwood

I tend to feel if people say they're going to do something, they will, if given the chance. — Margaret Atwood

The subliterary fiction she was churning out was many decades away from being in any way respectable. There was a small group that confessed to reading The Lord of the Rings, though you had to justify it through an interest in Old Norse. — Margaret Atwood

People change, though, especially after they are dead. — Margaret Atwood

They might play Extinctathon, or one of the others. Three-Dimensional Waco, Barbarian Stomp, Kwiktime Osama. They all used parallel strategies: you had to see where you were headed before you got there, but — Margaret Atwood

Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last — Margaret Atwood

One of the challenges with period costumes is, on a technical level, making the scale of different periods work on contemporary bodies. We're much bigger than what people were in older times. — Colleen Atwood