Margaret Atwood quotes - page 18

A reader can never tell if it's a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you're reading it, they're the same. It's a thimble. It's in the book. (Margaret Atwood)
The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wrong. View quote
Margaret Atwood
Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome. View quote
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. View quote
Margaret Atwood
Science is a tool, and we invent tools to do things we want. It's a question of how those tools are used by people. View quote
Margaret Atwood
I'm a strict, strict agnostic. It's very different from a casual, 'I don't know.' It's that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can't present it as fact. View quote
Margaret Atwood
I grew up in the north woods of Canada. You had to know certain things about survival. Wilderness survival courses weren't very formalized when I was growing up, but I was taught certain things about what to do if I got lost in the woods. View quote
Margaret Atwood
If social stability goes pear-shaped, you have a choice between anarchy and dictatorship. Most people will opt for more security, even if they have to give up some personal freedom. View quote
Margaret Atwood
Every aspect of human technology has a dark side, including the bow and arrow. View quote
Margaret Atwood
Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard. View quote
Margaret Atwood
People use technology only to mean digital technology. Technology is actually everything we make. (Margaret Atwood)
Social media is called social media for a reason. It lends itself to sharing rather than horn-tooting. View quote
Margaret Atwood
The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems. View quote
Margaret Atwood
Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space. View quote
Margaret Atwood
Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the United States, can you avoid such a thing. In the center of an empire, you can think of your experience as universal. Outside the empire or on the fringes of the empire, you cannot. View quote
Margaret Atwood
I hate to tell you this, but you will never actually go to a galaxy far, far away and encounter Darth Vader. That's science fiction; it isn't going to happen. View quote
Margaret Atwood
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. View quote
Margaret Atwood
All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'. View quote
Margaret Atwood
You quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves. View quote
Margaret Atwood
When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float. View quote
Margaret Atwood
There may not be one Truth - there may be several truths - but saying that is not to say that reality doesn't exist. (Margaret Atwood)
All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. ...Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist. View quote
Margaret Atwood
The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it. View quote
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; and through them, and some of my teachers, I discovered that there was a whole subterranean Wonderland of Canadian writing that was going on just out of general earshot and sight. View quote
Margaret Atwood
It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many. View quote
Margaret Atwood