Margaret Atwood Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.

  Margaret Atwood

  Inspirational, Motivational, Inspiring

• The society in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under Perry Miller, to whom the book is dedicated.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Puritan, Harvard

• 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.

• Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?

  Margaret Atwood

  Teacher, Book, School

  "Margaret Atwood: why Wattpad works" by Margaret Atwood, www.theguardian.com. July 6, 2012.

• I never have [suffered writer’s block], although I’ve had books that didn’t work out. I had to stop writing them. I just abandoned them. It was depressing, but it wasn’t the end of the world. When it really isn’t working, and you’ve been bashing yourself against the wall, it’s kind of a relief. I mean, sometimes you bash yourself against the wall and you get through it. But sometimes the wall is just a wall. There’s nothing to be done but go somewhere else.

  Margaret Atwood

  Depressing, Wall, Block

• 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.

• Show me a character totally without anxieties and I will show you a boring book.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Character, Anxiety

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

• Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.

  Margaret Atwood

  Hate, Book, Sea

• Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, People, Publish

  "Margaret Atwood on green rabbits, writing sex and Twitter". Interview with Carolyn Kellogg, latimesblogs.latimes.com. October 9, 2009.

• I have been known to buy e-versions of my books because I was in a hotel room and I needed one right away to look up something in it; very handy for that - you can have it just the next minute; you can press the button and just have it.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Buttons, Looks

• Some cleric putting a match to her. /Neither of them looks happy about it. /Once lit, she'll burn like a book, /like a book that was ever finished, /like a locked-up library.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Library, Looks

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Door”, p.69, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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”

• 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

• I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Lovers, Said

  Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.315, Anchor

• We all know that a book is not really a person. It isn’t a human being. But if you are a lover of books as books – as objects, that is – and ignore the human element in them – that is, their voices – you will be committing an error of the soul, because you will be an idolator, or else a fetishist.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Errors, Voice

• Perhaps they were looking for passion; perhaps they delved into this book as into a mysterious parcel - a gift box at the bottom of which, hidden in layers of rustling tissue paper, lay something they'd always longed for but couldn't ever grasp.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Passion, Tissue Paper

  Margaret Atwood (2000). “The Blind Assassin”, Random House Large Print Publishing

• I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, 'Nobody under 40,' or 'Nobody under 25.' With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is 'reader.'

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Thinking, Squares

  "Margaret Atwood on green rabbits, writing sex and Twitter". Interview with Carolyn Kellogg, latimesblogs.latimes.com. October 9, 2009.

• I have never had any problems with editors who wanted me to change my methods or point of view. I pay a lot of attention to editors, but in a different way. They sometimes catch mistakes and help with the order of poems in a book. I do not underestimate them! Indeed, I have been one myself.

  Margaret Atwood

  Mistake, Book, Views

  "Interview with Margaret Atwood". Interview with Raymond H. Thompson, d.lib.rochester.edu. March 25, 1991.

• The future of narrative? Built in, part of the human template. Not going away. The future of the codex book, with pages and so forth? A platform for transmitting narratives.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Going Away, Narrative

  Interview with Paul D. Miller, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• If I pick up a book with vampires on the cover, I want there to be vampires. 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.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Dragons, Vampire

• For every age there is a popular idea about what madness is, what causes it, and how a mad person should look and behave; and it's usually these popular ideas, rather than those of medical professionals, that turn up in songs and stories and plays and books.

  Margaret Atwood

  Song, Book, Play

  "Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For". Speech at the Stratford Festival, September 1997.

• As I was whizzing around the United States on yet another demented book tour, getting up at four in the morning to catch planes, doing two cities a day, eating the Pringle food object out of the mini-bar at night as I crawled around on the hotel room floor, too tired even to phone room service, I thought, 'There must be a better way of doing this'.

  Margaret Atwood

  Morning, Book, Tired

• I've been involved in activities with other people who were put in jail. We were protesting the closing of the prison farm program at the prison I used in a previous book, Alias Grace. Some of us also put up money in order to save the heirloom herd of cows there. So I own half a cow!

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Order, Jail

  "Margaret Atwood Remixes Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” as a Prison Drama". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. September, 2016.

• I have a big following among the biogeeks of this world. Nobody ever puts them in books.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, World, Bigs

  "Margaret Atwood: 'I have a big following among the biogeeks. 'Finally! Someone understands us!'". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. August 24, 2013.

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