Quotessence
Home / Authors / Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsPeopleThinkingKnowsWritingWayWantMenBookSaid

Famous Margaret Atwood Quotes

“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.”

KnowsWayNeedsMadeDreamMistakeLeaderPiecesTreePlanetsPaperFingersShoesEncountersSunsetBreakfastTake MeMetalsWorth ItScrapNounsCogsBad DreamDisk
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“What’s with her?” says the painter. “She’s mad because she’s a woman,” Jon says. This is something I haven’t heard for years, not since high school. Once it was a shaming thing to say, and crushing to have it said about you, by a man. It implied oddness, deformity, sexual malfunction. I go to the living room doorway. “I’m not mad because I’m a woman,” I say. “I’m mad because you’re an asshole.”

MenYearsSaidSchoolRoomsHeardHavensHigh SchoolMadPainterCrushLiving RoomDoorwaysImpliedDeformityMalfunctionOddness
Book:Cat's Eye
Create image

“In his student days, he used to argue that if a woman has no other course open to her but starvation, prostitution, or throwing herself from a bridge, then surely the prostitute, who has shown the most tenacious instinct for self-preservation, should be considered stronger and saner than her frailer and no longer living sisters. One couldn't have it both ways, he'd pointed out: if women are seduced and abandoned they're supposed to go mad, but if they survive, and seduce in their turn, then they were mad to begin with.”

IfsWayShouldSelfUsedTurnsCoursesStudentsStrongerMadInstinctArguingBridgesThrowingAbandonedPreservationProstitutionStarvationSeducingSelf PreservationTenacious
Book:Alias Grace: A Novel
Create image

“I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, than at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish t were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one’s life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow. I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.”

IfsI CanImportantDifferentStoriesBodyLightPainForceWishCan DoShapesBirdSorryCaughtActiveSnowRealizationSunsetCivilizedI'm SorryFragmentsDistractedHesitantTriviaRainstormsCrossfireSudden Realization
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.”

IfsKindEyeVisionDarknessKnowingBrokenPopsBonesThrownBottlesTidesNot KnowingGoing OutRevealingGlovesBlurOpen EyesKnowing The Future
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“For an instant she felt them, their identities, almost their substance, pass over her head like a wave. At some time she would be — or no, already she was like that too; she was one of them, her body the same, identical, merged with that other flesh that choked the air in the flowered room with its sweet organic scent; she felt suffocated by this thick sargasso-sea of femininity.”

BodyWould BeFeltRoomsAirSeaIdentitySweetWaveFleshSubstanceInstantThickScentFemininityIdentical
Book:The edible woman ; Surfacing ; Lady oracle
Create image