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
Related I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it Confucius All truth is safe and nothing ... JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL We begin to fight. The wind and I. Horns locked. Battling each other with elements. LAURA DOCKRILL ? Reviews are for readers AND authors. It’s a good way of learning from what people think about th... ANA CLAUDIA ANTUNES Speak your truth with grace and integrity, even though it might upset some people. You never know wh... LEILA SUMMERS I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget. WILLIAM LYON PHELPS I divide all readers into two classes: Those who read to remember and those who read to forget WILLIAM LYON PHELPS I divide all readers into two classes: Those who read to remember and those who read to forget WILLIAM LYON PHELPS Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't ... HILARY MANTEL To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes is a useful exercise; a book which will not... MARIA MITCHELL You never can tell, though, with suicide notes, can you? In the planetary aggregate of all life, the... MARTIN AMIS If you're a Thanksgiving dinner, but you don't like the stuffing or the cranberry sauce or anything ... JACK HANDY Well, if storytelling is important, then your narrative ability, or your ability to put into words o... HOWARD GARDNER If we come from the water, I conclude that we come from different kinds of it. I will meet a person ... C. JOYBELL C. There are some people who need to wear a label round their necks to show that they are Christians at... CHARLES SPURGEON LIFE. Like a rubix cube, it has a lot of TWISTS AND TURNS. Those who doesn't know how to fix their m... JOAN COLLEEN R. KATIPUNAN Eighty percent of the people who come into a Christian book store have a felt need. That's an incred... JO PANTER Who knew three dots could make such a difference? Like everything else, a love or a wish or whatever... SARAH DESSEN It’s a weird phrase in English, in love, like it’s a sea you drown in or a town you live in. You... JOHN GREEN Education - much like law or medicine - should be a profession governed by professionals. Unfortunat... RANDI WEINGARTEN There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there... DOUGLAS EVERETT There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there... DOUGLAS H. EVERETT There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there... DESIDERIUS ERASMUS There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then the... DOUGLAS EVERETT You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a ... ANAïS NIN I opened myself to your silences. MARGARET ATWOOD I know a girl who cries when she practices violin because each note sounds so pure it just cuts into... CONOR OBERST Don't add people to your subscriber list just because they once wrote you a note. Or once answer... M. J. ROSE If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it... OSCAR WILDE What will make you a star is in you SOTONYE ANGA Create a world in front of your readers where they can taste, smell, touch, hear, see, and move. Or ... PAWAN MISHRA So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who ... ROALD DAHL The sea is a lonely and hostile place, Captain,' Jansen said coldly. 'It is always best not to make ... JOCELYN MURRAY Karma has been a pop culture term for ages. But really, what the heck is it? Karma is not... VERA NAZARIAN And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine... BIBLE Those who have suffered much are like those who know many languages; they have learned to understand... MADAME SWETSHINE His life seemed like a deck of cards, and in the midst of all those two’s and three’s someone ha... TEKOA MANNING Stop tagging everyone into your life's profile. For all you don't know, some will neither comment no... ISRAELMORE AYIVOR Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your l... ROBIN HOBB Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. You release the pain of the past and press on. It's a new day, and God is doing a new thing. He want... CRAIG GROESCHEL Anyways, that very same night there was a fight in the casino on B Deck. Some of the passengers got ... CHRISTINA ENGELA The trick is not to become somebody else. You become somebody else when you're in front of a cam... ERNEST BORGNINE Sometimes, readers, when they're young, are given, say, a book like 'Moby Dick' to read.... GABRIELLE ZEVIN A human being who decides not to doubt or question anything in their life might as well be living in... ALLISON RIVERA I know some authors who have gotten $25,000 advances and put it all into marketing, others who alloc... M. J. ROSE If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd... CORNELIA FUNKE Writing a mystery is like drawing a picture and then cutting it into little pieces that you offer to... ASHWIN SANGHI Later he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning hi... FLANNERY O'CONNOR Love it or hate it, Obamacare is the law of the land. It was passed by Congress, signed into law by ... HANK JOHNSON In my 26 years I haven't run into a baby who was rolled over on in bed, or who suffocated next to mo... DIANE ABBOTT In comics, there are depths that don't reveal themselves immediately, and the stuff that you mig... DAVE GIBBONS But I never looked like that!’ - How do you know? What is the ‘you’ you might or might not loo... ROLAND BARTHES Lambhood and tigerishness may be found in either gender, and in the same individual at different tim... MARGARET ATWOOD There are some who say that sitting at home reading is the equivalent of travel, because the experie... LEMONY SNICKET A book is a loaded gun in the house next door...Who knows who might be the target of the well-read m... RAY BRADBURY If you're an artist, always keep at it, there will be someone out there who sees the universe and so... JENNIFER MEGAN VARNADORE Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do SOREN KIERKEGAARD Stick a shovel in the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light. MARGARET ATWOOD She stubs out her cigarette in the brown glass ashtray, then settles herself against him, ear to his... MARGARET ATWOOD She’s the kind of woman who wants what she doesn’t have and gets what she wants and then despise... MARGARET ATWOOD Well, you can't know it without something having been sneezed. A.A. MILNE We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?' asked Piglet. Even longer,' Pooh answered.” ... A.A. MILNE If a dream can tell the future it can also thwart that future. For God will not permit that we shall... CORMAC MCCARTHY Anyone who calls it "sexual intercourse" can't possibly be interested in actually doing it. You migh... ALLAN SHERMAN This is a global war on terror, and if we don't win the battle in Iraq, where else might we win it o... BILL YOUNG On the whole, age comes more gently to those who have some doorway into an abstract world-art, or ph... FREYA STARK Girls and guys are like a bus stop - they come and go. You never know, like, who's going to be t... DAREN KAGASOFF I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. RAINER MARIA RILKE I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone RAINER MARIA RILKE Be like a ram-ventilator shark! Always keep going forward or else you'll drown! ADNAN BAHATTI There are two types of people - those who come into a room and say, "Well, here I am!" and those who... FREDERICK L. COLLINS There are two types of people--those who come into a room and say, 'Well, here I am!' and those who ... FREDERICK L COLLINS Water never stops moving. Rain falls, and runs down a mountain into a river. The river finds its way... JODI PICOULT I have a huge span of fans, some who know all my radio songs and are familiar with my popular stuff ... WIZ KHALIFA Those who know don’t talk. Those who talk don’t know. Close your mouth, block off your senses, b... LAO TZU You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a ... ANAIS NIN Mother Superior jump the gun... -The Beatles, Happiness is a Warm Gun LAUREN MYRACLE Kindle Singles is publishing on skates. It prints like lightning; our book meets readers in hours. I... RICHARD BACH Welcome, welcome to Caraval! The grandest show on land or by sea. Inside you’ll experience more wo... STEPHANIE GARBER It is a lie. ARTHUR MILLER You might have a favorite book or film, but you can only watch or read it so many times before you h... LES CLAYPOOL You may want to keep a commonplace book which is a notebook where you can copy parts of books you th... LEMONY SNICKET As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist... URSULA K. LE GUIN Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The... MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The... MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. There are two types of people. Those we who come into a room and say, Well, here I am! and those who... FREDERICK L. COLLINS There are two types of people. Those we who come into a room and say, "Well, here I am!" and those w... FREDERICK L. COLLINS You got to have a lot of desire I guess and then the other thing is you got can't have any fear, and... WALT DAVIS In my experience, take the Holy Spirit out of the equation of your life and it spells boring. Add it... MARK BATTERSON If you don't know where you're going, you might wind up some place else. YOGI BERRA I was trained as a neurologist, and then I went into the theater, and if you're brought up to th... JONATHAN MILLER Friendship is like a walk in the wood; you may not know the terrain too well or even know where you ... JAACHYNMA N.E. AGU Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in ... BEN OKRI That's why I loved being with you. We could do the simplest things, like toss starfish into the ocea... NICHOLAS SPARKS You would like to read, but somehow the rain gets into the book, too; not literally, and yet it real... SáNDOR MáRAI It's just like everything else. There's going to be some cuts and bumps, but it's all safe. DONNIE MONTGOMERY Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the c... BRUCE LEE You take a straight tip from the stable, Cokey, if you must hate, hate the government or the people ... JOYCE CARY I never understood people who said their greatest fear was public speaking, or spiders, or any of th... DAVID BENIOFF
More Margaret Atwood
Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome. MARGARET ATWOOD Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I'm a realist. MARGARET ATWOOD Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they ... MARGARET ATWOOD A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you. MARGARET ATWOOD If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schiz... MARGARET ATWOOD The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many... MARGARET ATWOOD An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness. MARGARET ATWOOD If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word. MARGARET ATWOOD Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space be... MARGARET ATWOOD I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did,... MARGARET ATWOOD When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely. MARGARET ATWOOD You're never going to kill storytelling, because it's built into the human plan. We come wit... MARGARET ATWOOD Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no yo... MARGARET ATWOOD Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do ... MARGARET ATWOOD Don't let the bastards grind you down. MARGARET ATWOOD When you can't tell the difference between your own pleasure and your pain then you're an addict. MARGARET ATWOOD The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but ... MARGARET ATWOOD Once upon a time you could wander around one country, then the next and then maybe you'd go to Engla... MARGARET ATWOOD They've removed anything you can tie a rope to. MARGARET ATWOOD Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all... MARGARET ATWOOD No one knows what cuases an outer landscape to become an inner one. MARGARET ATWOOD The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for ... MARGARET ATWOOD Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you c... MARGARET ATWOOD Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories,... MARGARET ATWOOD Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells ... MARGARET ATWOOD Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results. MARGARET ATWOOD Longed for him. Got him. Shit. MARGARET ATWOOD If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you ... MARGARET ATWOOD But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind eve... MARGARET ATWOOD I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed an... MARGARET ATWOOD I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until yo... MARGARET ATWOOD If i thought this would never happen again I would die. But this is wrong, nobody dies from lac... MARGARET ATWOOD Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic... MARGARET ATWOOD That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even an... MARGARET ATWOOD There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet a... MARGARET ATWOOD We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of pr... MARGARET ATWOOD But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it... MARGARET ATWOOD Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Wat... MARGARET ATWOOD Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself. MARGARET ATWOOD The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for lo... MARGARET ATWOOD A word after a word after a word is power. MARGARET ATWOOD I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because the... MARGARET ATWOOD She even had a kind of special position among men: she was an exception, she fitted none of the cate... MARGARET ATWOOD Men are not to be told anything they might find too painful; the secret depths of human nature, the ... MARGARET ATWOOD The basic Female body comes with the following accessories: garter belt, panty-girdle, crinoline, ca... MARGARET ATWOOD Never pray for justice, because you might get some. MARGARET ATWOOD If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least h... MARGARET ATWOOD I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and... MARGARET ATWOOD A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you MARGARET ATWOOD Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD War is what happens when language fails. MARGARET ATWOOD Miranda nods, because she knows that to be true: noble people don't do things for the money, they si... MARGARET ATWOOD Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. MARGARET ATWOOD This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love. MARGARET ATWOOD I'm a strict, strict agnostic. It's very different from a casual, 'I don't know.'... MARGARET ATWOOD Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-size... MARGARET ATWOOD Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. P... MARGARET ATWOOD I hate to tell you this, but you will never actually go to a galaxy far, far away and encounter Dart... MARGARET ATWOOD Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are describe... MARGARET ATWOOD The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose. MARGARET ATWOOD In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. MARGARET ATWOOD I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think. MARGARET ATWOOD Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada,... MARGARET ATWOOD Sometimes there would be couples, arm in arm—laughing, happy, amorous. Victims of an enormous frau... MARGARET ATWOOD I've never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are... MARGARET ATWOOD Was this a betrayal, or was it an act of courage? Perhaps both. Neither one involves forethought: su... MARGARET ATWOOD The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is... MARGARET ATWOOD Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee... I hold inside it the clues and solutions and ... MARGARET ATWOOD They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it mark... MARGARET ATWOOD Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, ... MARGARET ATWOOD If you're put on a pedestal, you're supposed to behave yourself like a pedestal type of pers... MARGARET ATWOOD If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People... MARGARET ATWOOD I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually b... MARGARET ATWOOD Every aspect of human technology has a dark side, including the bow and arrow. MARGARET ATWOOD Vampires get the joy of flying around and living forever, werewolves get the joy of animal spirits. ... MARGARET ATWOOD Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays. MARGARET ATWOOD You will always have partial points of view, and you'll always have the story behind the story t... MARGARET ATWOOD Canada was built on dead beavers. MARGARET ATWOOD How shrunk, how dwindled, in our times Creation's mighty seed - For Man has broke the Fell... MARGARET ATWOOD She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation. In spirit she walks the city, traces its... MARGARET ATWOOD You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself. MARGARET ATWOOD Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I c... MARGARET ATWOOD Gardening is not a rational act. MARGARET ATWOOD Second-hand American was spreading over him in patches, like mange or lichen. He was infested, garbl... MARGARET ATWOOD وقتی دردپایان می یابد،دیگر در یاد چه کسی می ماند؟ تنها �... MARGARET ATWOOD We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. MARGARET ATWOOD If social stability goes pear-shaped, you have a choice between anarchy and dictatorship. Most peopl... MARGARET ATWOOD When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling ti... MARGARET ATWOOD We understand more than we know. MARGARET ATWOOD Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down. MARGARET ATWOOD You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their cred... MARGARET ATWOOD You hear doom and gloom about the Internet ruining young people's command of English - that'... MARGARET ATWOOD If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I wa... MARGARET ATWOOD Girl Without Hands Walking through the ruins on your way to work that do not lo... MARGARET ATWOOD '1984' is not a wonder tale. Not only could it happen, but it has happened, but under differ... MARGARET ATWOOD The thing about delirium is you think it's great, but it actually isn't. MARGARET ATWOOD We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we're so dependent on ... MARGARET ATWOOD I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka. MARGARET ATWOOD A divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there's less of you. MARGARET ATWOOD The truly fearless think of themselves as normal. MARGARET ATWOOD Or perhaps she's just softening me up: she's a Baptist, she'd like me to find Jesus, or vice versa, ... MARGARET ATWOOD Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing ove... MARGARET ATWOOD When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like ... MARGARET ATWOOD My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one ... MARGARET ATWOOD The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth. MARGARET ATWOOD I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months... MARGARET ATWOOD If you're waiting for the perfect moment, you'll never write a thing because it will never a... MARGARET ATWOOD Debt is part of the human condition. Civilization is based on exchanges - on gifts, trades, loans - ... MARGARET ATWOOD I particularly like Twitter, because it's short and can be very funny and informative. It's ... MARGARET ATWOOD I do have a life,' says Charis, blinking wet eyes. 'You have a rich inner life,' says Ton... MARGARET ATWOOD Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? MARGARET ATWOOD No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the... MARGARET ATWOOD We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of pr... MARGARET ATWOOD But despite everything, we didn't do badly by one another, we did as well as most. I wish she were h... MARGARET ATWOOD But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No ... MARGARET ATWOOD Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some. MARGARET ATWOOD Our problem right now is that we're so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge n... MARGARET ATWOOD There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind. MARGARET ATWOOD Social media is called social media for a reason. It lends itself to sharing rather than horn-tootin... MARGARET ATWOOD Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide... MARGARET ATWOOD Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself through a window cloud... MARGARET ATWOOD Modesty is invisibility...Never forget it. To be seen—to be seen —is to be...penetrated. W... MARGARET ATWOOD In theory I can do almost anything; certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as po... MARGARET ATWOOD Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on you... MARGARET ATWOOD Sauve qui peut. To survive we’d all turn thief and rascal, or so says the fox, MARGARET ATWOOD Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that. MARGARET ATWOOD But how can you have a sense of wonder if you’re prepared for everything? MARGARET ATWOOD Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, scho... MARGARET ATWOOD A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness. MARGARET ATWOOD The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wron... MARGARET ATWOOD She finds this objectivity of hers, this clarity, almost more depressing than she can bear, not beca... MARGARET ATWOOD Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a ... MARGARET ATWOOD Many believed what they were told: that the welfare of the entire kingdom depended on their selfless... MARGARET ATWOOD She did understand, or at least she understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, ... MARGARET ATWOOD When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be whe... MARGARET ATWOOD We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we're about to do something harmful, t... MARGARET ATWOOD Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide... MARGARET ATWOOD I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing... MARGARET ATWOOD Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you... MARGARET ATWOOD What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams... MARGARET ATWOOD There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's somethin... MARGARET ATWOOD I believe that everyone else my age is an adult whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness... MARGARET ATWOOD The society in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied... MARGARET ATWOOD You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly f... MARGARET ATWOOD Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you sa... MARGARET ATWOOD You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t ne... MARGARET ATWOOD But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion.... MARGARET ATWOOD When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things ... MARGARET ATWOOD Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert... MARGARET ATWOOD It wasn't so easy though, ending the war. A war is a huge fire; the ashes from it drift far, and set... MARGARET ATWOOD The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds. MARGARET ATWOOD I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose. MARGARET ATWOOD She knows herself to be at the mercy of events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy. MARGARET ATWOOD Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, t... MARGARET ATWOOD Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert... MARGARET ATWOOD Home is where the heart is, I thought now, gathering myself together in Betty's Luncheonette. I had ... MARGARET ATWOOD Should is a futile word. It's about what didn't happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It... MARGARET ATWOOD What is it the I'll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which i... MARGARET ATWOOD There were a lot of gods. Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything. MARGARET ATWOOD Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. They hurt themselves instead; or else they do it so... MARGARET ATWOOD Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the brig... MARGARET ATWOOD The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by ... MARGARET ATWOOD There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication. MARGARET ATWOOD The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one. MARGARET ATWOOD Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Secon... MARGARET ATWOOD Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. MARGARET ATWOOD We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy? MARGARET ATWOOD The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betr... MARGARET ATWOOD Put yourself in a different room, that's what the mind is for. MARGARET ATWOOD The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose MARGARET ATWOOD I think of this as a democratizing device. MARGARET ATWOOD I'm curious. If someone says 'Don't open that door', I'm right there! MARGARET ATWOOD The main thing is to keep yourself awake [on writing] MARGARET ATWOOD For years I wanted to be older, and now I am. MARGARET ATWOOD He's very in depth, on the dark side. He's interested in structure and how things work. After readin... MARGARET ATWOOD The Orange prize has been pivotal in the careers of many women writers - it's given them that extra ... MARGARET ATWOOD Just think of it as a very, very long pen. MARGARET ATWOOD Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked; as I never was when I was not one MARGARET ATWOOD This above all, to refuse to be a victim. MARGARET ATWOOD We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups. MARGARET ATWOOD A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. MARGARET ATWOOD Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are hum... MARGARET ATWOOD They all disowned their parents long ago, the way you are supposed to MARGARET ATWOOD You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer. MARGARET ATWOOD Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the Un... MARGARET ATWOOD Any death is stupid from the viewpoint of whoever is undergoing it, Adam One used to say, because no... MARGARET ATWOOD Also I could hear Amanda’s voice: Why are you being so weak? Love’s never a fair trade. So Jimmy... MARGARET ATWOOD I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices,... MARGARET ATWOOD Life is warped. I'm just in sync. MARGARET ATWOOD I thought everyone would be familiar with this figure: if I'd studied a thing in school I assumed it... MARGARET ATWOOD We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves. MARGARET ATWOOD My parents are like younger, urchinlike brothers and sisters whose faces are dirty and who blurt out... MARGARET ATWOOD Now we come to forgiveness. Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important thing... MARGARET ATWOOD Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe. MARGARET ATWOOD Human tool-makers always make tools that will help us get what we want, and what we want hasn't chan... MARGARET ATWOOD She doesn't think it's a good idea to know the future, because you can hardly ever change it, so why... MARGARET ATWOOD The possibility of injury or death was a strong attraction: as the online world became more and more... MARGARET ATWOOD