Margaret atwood quotes

When we're young, we like happy endings. When we're a little older, we think happy endings are unrealistic and so we prefer bad but credible endings. When we're older still, we realize happy endings aren't so bad after all.

Myths can't be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time.

But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

If a god showed up every time you put a quarter in the prayer slot it wouldn't be God, it would be a puppet that you could control by doing that...that would make the deity subservient to you. So it wouldn't be a deity would it?

The facts of this world seen clearly are seen through tears.

Powerlessness and silence go together.

Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.

And she finds it difficult to believe—that a person would love her even when she isn't trying. Trying to figure out what other people need, trying to be worthy.

Where do the words go when we have said them?

Maybe I don't really want to know what's going on. Maybe I'd rather not know. Maybe I couldn't bear to know. The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge.

The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.

When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things get in that ought to be shut out. The locks lose their powers. The guards go to sleep. The passwords fail.

If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart.

A word after a word after a word is power.

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

To want is to have a weakness.

Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.

I did not know how to paint or even what to paint, but I knew I had to begin.

Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.

If you're a woman writer, sometime, somewhere, you will be asked: Do you think of yourself as a writer first, or as a woman first? Look out. Whoever asks this hates and fears both writing and women.

Love is giving, marriage is buying and selling. You can't put love into a contract.

She knows herself to be at the mercy of events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy.

Debt is part of the human condition. Civilization is based on exchanges - on gifts, trades, loans - and the revenges and insults that come when they are not paid back.

And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.

You can think clearly only with your clothes on.

Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.

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.

Men and women are not "equal" if "equal" means "exactly the same." Our many puzzlements and indeed unhappinesses come from trying to figure out what the differences really mean, or should mean, or should not mean.

poetry is where the language is renewed.

Inside the peach, there is a stone.

There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.

The male frog in mating season," said Crake, "makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog, one with superior genes. Small male frogs—it's been documented—discover if they position themselves in empty drainpipes, the pipe acts as a voice amplifier and the small frog appears much larger than it really is." So?" So that's what art is for the artist, an empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.

Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

Good writing takes place at intersections, at what you might call knots, at places where the society is snarled or knotted up.

I want, I don’t want. How can one live with such a heart?

If your not annoying somebody, you're not alive.

Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.

In the end, we'll all become stories.

The fabric of democracy is always fragile everywhere because it depends on the will of citizens to protect it, and when they become scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend it, it can go very quickly.

The trickle-down theory of economics has it that it's good for rich people to get even richer because some of their wealth will trickle own, through their no doubt lavish spending, upon those who stand below them on the economic ladder. Notice that the metaphor is not that of a gushing waterfall but of a leaking tap: even the most optimistic endorsers of this concept do not picture very much real flow, as their language reveals" pg. 102.

Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blur the edges; then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it's noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear.

Don't let the bastards grind you down.

This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year's threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath.

There were a lot of gods. Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything.

So much better to travel than to arrive.

All it takes,” said Crake, “is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.

Disease has always been a much bigger killer of human beings than wars.

Like the trains, she's never on time and always departing.

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.

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.

What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed up against a wall, everything a huge foreground, of details, close-ups, hairs, the weave of the bedsheet, the molecules of the face. Your own skin like a map, a diagram of futility, criscrossed with tiny roads that lead nowhere. Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be.

The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner.

Potential has a shelf life.

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

I never say I'm an "ist" of any kind unless I know how the other person is defining it.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it.

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

Ah men, why do you want all this attention? I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutely necessary. What do you have to offer me I can't find otherwise except humiliation? Which I no longer need.

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.

There are some women who seem to be born without fear, just as there are people who are born without the ability to feel pain ... Providence appears to protect such women, maybe out of astonishment.

Lose your temper and you lose the fight.

If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.

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

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.

How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.

Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.

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.

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

There is more than one kind of freedom," said Aunt Lydia. "Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.

Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create ever more dangerous messes. Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you.

In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys.

Instead I will say, "Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths." These are worth it. These are what I have come for.

I’m not sure which is worse: intense feeling, or the absence of it.

It is better to hope than to mope!

The sands of time are quicksands ... so much can sink into them without a trace.

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.

Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.

More of your brain is involved when reading than it is when you watch television... because you are supplying just about everything... you're a creator.

Winning intoxicates you, and numbs you to the sufferings of others.

Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.

A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

The astrologers would tell that the U.S. is ruled by fire and Canada is ruled by water. Short version: You pep us up, we cool you down.

I exist in two places, here and where you are.

If he wants to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before him have made the same life choice.

I myself have 12 hats and each one represents a different personality. Why just be yourself.

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.

If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

Things musicals taught me: All your problems will go away if you sing about it.

Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance.

This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love.

Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.

Oppression involves a failure of the imagination: the failure to imagine the full humanity of other human beings.

We understand more than we know.

If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?

And consider: it is loss to which everything flows, absence in which everything flowers

I think calling it climate change is rather limiting. I would rather call it the everything change.

Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

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.

There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.

The desire to be loved is the last illusion. Give it up and you will be free.

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.

By now you know: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, "Take me to your leaders." Even I--unused to your ways though I am--would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them. Instead I will say, "Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths." These are worth it. These are what I have come for.

The world is being run by people my age, men my age, with falling-out hair and health worries, and it frightens me. When the leaders were older than me I could believe in their wisdom, I could believe they had transcended rage and malice and the need to be loved. Now I know better. I look at the faces in newspapers, in magazines, and wonder: what greeds, what furies drive them on?

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.

Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?

As William Gibson says, the future is already here but it's lumpy. It's unevenly distributed. Some people are already living this, the ones on low-lying islands off the coast of India are being swept away, you know, it's already happening to some people. We happen to be very lucky so far.

There is no fool like an educated fool.

You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.

Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

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'.

Don't wait until you're 'in the mood.' Get into the mood by writing.

I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.

I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart.

I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.

Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

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.

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?

If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.