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Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood Quotes

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Famous Margaret Atwood Quotes

“If you want to be a writer, you should go into the largest library you can find and stand there contemplating the books that have been written. Then you should ask yourself, 'Do I really have anything to add?' If you have the arrogance or the humility to say yes, you will know you have the vocation.”

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Book:Second words: selected critical prose
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“It's a critical fallacy of our times ... that a writer should 'grow,' 'change,' or 'develop.' This fallacy causes us to expect from children or radishes: 'grow,' or there's something wrong with you. But writers are not radishes. If you look at what most writers actually do, it resembles a theme with variations more than it does the popular notion of growth.”

IfsShouldLooksChildrenDoeGrowsCausesGrowthNotionCriticalOur TimeThemeVariationFallacyRadishes
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“Writers are much better behaved nowadays, for a couple of reasons. Once upon a time nobody was thinking of a career, unless you lived in New York, so there wasn't as much pressure to present a respectable exterior. And secondly, there was no social media. So if you were found face down on the floor - people did do that quite a bit; usually men, but not always - or fell through plate glass windows or got into scrapes, it became a rumor, and rumors are hard to pin down.”

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Author:Margaret Atwood
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“We're facing growing climate change, more floods, more droughts, more crisis on a planetary level, and the systems we put in place in the twentieth century are just not going to work. We've run out of stuff. Our big problems are going to be energy supplies and food supplies. This is not a right-left issue. It's a people issue, and it cuts across all our categories.”

PeopleProblemBigsRunningEnergyLeftStuffLevelsIssuesCuttingGrowingCenturyCrisisClimateClimate ChangeCategoriesFloodGoing To WorkTwentieth CenturySuppliesBig ProblemsDroughtFood Supply
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“There's more private security in the United States than there are publicly funded forces, like police. What you don't want is a meld of government and commerce - you really want to keep those two things separate - because once you have that meld, you've got megacorruption, and you have no third force to whom you can say this stuff is poisoning our kids.”

WantTwoStatesGovernmentKidsForceStuffUnitedUnited StatesSecurityThirdsPoliceTwo ThingsCommercePoisoning
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“I don't believe in a perfect world. I don't believe it's achievable, and I believe the people who try to achieve it usually end up turning it into something like Cambodia or something very similar because purity tests set in. Are you ideologically pure enough to be allowed to live? Well, it turns out that very few people are, so you end up with a big powerful struggle and a mass killing scene.”

PeopleWorldTryingBelieveWellsEndsEnoughBigsTurnsI BelievePerfectPowerfulStruggleAchieveScenePureMassTestsKillingDon't BelievePurityLive WellA Perfect WorldCambodia
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“There are novels that end well, but in between there are human beings acting like human beings. And human beings are not perfect. All of the motives a human being may have, which are mixed, that's the novelists' materials. That's where they have to go. And a lot of that just isn't pretty. We like to think of ourselves as really, really good people. But look in the mirror. Really look. Look at your own mixed motives. And then multiply that.”

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Author:Margaret Atwood
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“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”

ShouldEndsNatureSpringGardenSeasonsSmellThe End Of The DayGardeningDirtGardenerSpringtimeInspirational NatureSpring PoemsApril And SpringSpring FlowersSpring SeasonGarden LoveGardening And GodBeauty Of The EarthThink SpringSpring DaySpring InspirationalFirst Day Of SpringWelcome SpringSpring GardenEquinoxSpring GardeningSpringtime InspirationalFunny SpringMarch PoemsHappy SpringSpring RainGood SpringTaste And Smell
Book:Bluebeard's Egg
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