Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 22

Quotes about:

• 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

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• 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.

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• 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

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• I have a fork and a spoon, but never a knife… as if I’m lacking manual skills or teeth. I have both, however. That’s why I’m not allowed a knife.

  Margaret Atwood

  Knives, Skills, Teeth

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• 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

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• I could end this with a moral, as if this were a fable about animals, though no fables are really about animals.

  Margaret Atwood

  Animal, Fables, Moral

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• No one knows what cuases an outer landscape to become an inner one.

  Margaret Atwood

  Landscape, Knows

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• If you want what's in the package you should at least know how to get the string off, is what I say.

  Margaret Atwood

  Want, Should, Strings

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Tent”, p.38, Anchor

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• What we share may be a lot like a traffic accident but we get one another. We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something.

  Margaret Atwood

  Sharks, Survivor, May

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• Starlet sex scandal. Giant squid involved.

  Margaret Atwood

  Sex, Squids, Giants

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• The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wrong.

  Margaret Atwood

  Sleep, Problem, Going To Sleep

  "Margaret Atwood On Progress, Fear And Social Media". Interview with Claire Sibonney, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 14, 2013.

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• I was unfair to him, of course, but where would I have been without unfairness? In thrall, in harness. Young women need unfairness, it's one of their few defenses. They need their callousness, they need their ignorance. They walk in the dark, along the edges of high cliffs, humming to themselves, thinking themselves invulnerable.

  Margaret Atwood

  Ignorance, Dark, Thinking

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

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• Where do you draw the line, between love and greed? We never did know, we always wanted more. We want to take it all in, for one last time, we want to eat the world with our eyes.

  Margaret Atwood

  Eye, Greed, World

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• There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.

  Margaret Atwood

  Would Be, Holmes, Publication

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• When faced with the inevitable, you always have a choice... As I learned during my liberal arts education, any symbol can have, in the imaginative context, two versions, a positive and a negative... If you spill your milk you're left with a glass which is either half empty or half full... You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.

  Margaret Atwood

  Inspirational, Graduation, Art

  "Attitude". Margaret Atwood's commencement address at the University of Toronto, Canada, www.humanity.org. June 14, 1983.

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• The prospect of his future life stretched before him like a sentence; not a prison sentence but a long-winded sentence with a lot of unnecessary subordinate clauses, as he was soon in the habit of quipping during Happy Hour pickup time at the local campus bars and pubs. He couldn’t say he was looking forward to it, this rest-of-his-life.

  Margaret Atwood

  Long, Bars, Looking Forward

  Margaret Atwood (2009). “Oryx And Crake”, p.106, Hachette UK

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• Either I'm alive or I'm dying, she said to Daniel. Please don't feel you can't tell me. Which is it?
  Which does it feel like? said Daniel. He patted her hand. You're not dead yet. You're a lot more alive than many people.
  This isn't good enough for Rennie. She wants something definite, the real truth, one way or the other. Then she will know what she should do next. It's this suspension, hanging in a void, this half-life she can't bear. She can't bear not knowing. She doesn't want to know.

  Margaret Atwood

  Life, Truth, Real

  Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bodily Harm”, p.56, Simon and Schuster

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• Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.

  Margaret Atwood

  Dream, Art, Society

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

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• Love was like a steamroller. There was no avoiding it; it went over you and you came out flat.

  Margaret Atwood

  Broken Heart, Over You, Avoiding

  Margaret Atwood (1993). “Wilderness Tips”, Bantam

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• Love is the pursuit of shadows.

  Margaret Atwood

  Broken Heart, Love Is, Shadow

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• I thought everyone would be familiar with this figure: if I'd studied a thing in school I assumed it was general knowledge. I hadn't yet discovered that I lived in a sort of transparent balloon, drifting over the world without making much contact with it, and that the people I knew appeared to me at a different angle from the one at which they appeared to themselves; and that the reverse was also true. I was smaller to others, up there in my balloon, than I was to myself. I was also blurrier.

  Margaret Atwood

  School, People, Different

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• Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.

  Margaret Atwood

  Selfish, Princess, Want

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• This is the middle of my life, I think of it as a place, like the middle of a river, the middle of a bridge, halfway across, halfway over. I'm supposed to have accumulated things by now: possessions, responsibilities, achievements, experience and wisdom. I'm supposed to be a person of substance.

  Margaret Atwood

  Responsibility, Thinking, Bridges

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

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• Despite their cool poses they wear their cravings on the outside, like the suckers on a squid. They want it all.

  Margaret Atwood

  Squids, Want, Sucker

  Margaret Atwood (1988). “Cat's eye”, Doubleday, 1989

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• Stick a shovel into the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light. Good for trade, we thrive on bones; without them there'd be no stories.

  Margaret Atwood

  Light, Stories, Sticks

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.11, Anchor

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