Margaret Atwood quotes - page 15

My trade is courage and atrocities. I look at them and do not condemn. I write things down the way they happened, as near as can be remembered. I don't ask why, because it is mostly the same. Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win. (Margaret Atwood)
After a year or two of keeping my head down and trying to pass myself off as a normal person, I made contact with the five other people at my university who were interested in writing. View quote
Margaret Atwood
I was scuttling along in my usual furtive way, suspecting no ill, when a large invisible thumb descended from the sky and pressed down on the top of my head. A poem formed. View quote
Margaret Atwood
There were a lot of utopias in the nineteenth century, wonderful societies that we might possibly construct. Those went pretty much out of fashion after World War I. View quote
Margaret Atwood
There is so much silence between the words, you say. You say, The sensed absence of God and the sensed presence amount to much the same thing, only in reverse. View quote
Margaret Atwood
I said "writer," not "poet;" I did have some common sense. View quote
Margaret Atwood
I am the horizon you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso. View quote
Margaret Atwood
I exist in two places, here and where you are. View quote
Margaret Atwood
They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word. These women could be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose. View quote
Margaret Atwood
I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it's shameful or immodest but because I don't want to see it. I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely. View quote
Margaret Atwood
We are survivors, of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something. (Margaret Atwood)
I did not know how to paint or even what to paint, but I knew I had to begin. View quote
Margaret Atwood
Genius is an infinite capacity for causing pain. View quote
Margaret Atwood
Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself:. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor. View quote
Margaret Atwood
How were we to know we were happy? View quote
Margaret Atwood
I am tempted to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great compliment to a woman. View quote
Margaret Atwood
What is your favorite word?” "And. It is so hopeful. View quote
Margaret Atwood
The moon is a stone and the sky is full of deadly hardware, but oh God, how beautiful anyway. View quote
Margaret Atwood
Where were we? I've forgotten. He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever. Right. Yes. The usual choices. View quote
Margaret Atwood
Last year I abstained this year I devour without guilt which is also an art. View quote
Margaret Atwood
This above all, to refuse to be a victim. Unless I can do that I can do nothing. (Margaret Atwood)
I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight. View quote
Margaret Atwood
You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves. View quote
Margaret Atwood
There's only so long you can feel sorry for a person before you come to feel that their affliction is an act of malice committed by them against you. View quote
Margaret Atwood
Nor did I make any distinctions between great literature and any other kind. I just liked reading. View quote
Margaret Atwood