Quotessence
Home / Authors / Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsPeopleThinkingKnowsWritingWayWantMenBookSaidHumansFeelsKindStoriesAgeLoveHas BeensLooksNeedsWomen

Famous Margaret Atwood Quotes

“Everybody was going along thinking that it was a day like any other day, and bang, down went the Twin Towers. Changed everything. So you can't really predict the future, but you can say, "Boy, are those glaciers ever melting." You can measure that, and you can say, "When they're all melted there won't be any Athabasca River," and you can say, "What will happen to the oil sands then?" because you need a lot of water to make that oil. "Where's that going to come from?" You can say things like that.”

ThinkingNeedsHappensWaterBoysChangedRiversOilSandTwinsTowersBangsMeltingGlaciersTwin Towers
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“Plague has hung over human history. The biggest human extinction was after 1492 in North and South America when the mortality rate was 95 per cent, which is enormous. But again, I'm actually giving you grounds for optimism: There were enough to continue. The five per cent who made it through are what you need to survive a bottleneck, which we have been through before.”

NeedsGivingHumansHas BeensMadeEnoughAmericaFiveOptimismSouthRateEnormousMade ItMortalityCentsHungExtinctionPlagueHuman HistorySouth AmericaNorth And SouthBottlenecks
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“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?”

PeopleKnowsMenWorldNeedsBelieveLooksRunningAgeFacesFallLeaderWonderWorryHairGreedRageNewspapersMagazinesFuryMalice
Book:Cat's Eye
Create image

“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.”

WantNeedsTwoMomentsFacesHugeHairPerspectiveWallShapesPerceptionIllusionSkinsDepthDetailsSurfaceTinyDimensionsMapsFlatsYour FaceArrangementsLive In The MomentMoleculesFutilityDiagramsForeground
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“at last you, will say (maybe without speaking) (there are mountains inside your skull garden and chaos, ocean and hurricane; certain corners of rooms, portraits of great-grandmothers, curtains of a particular shade; your deserts; your private dinosaurs; the first woman) all i need to know: tell me everything just as it was from the beginning.”

KnowsNeedsFirstsLastsCertainRoomsParticularMountainOceanGardenChaosCornersDesertGrandmotherShadePortraitsCurtainsHurricanesSkullsDinosaursGreat Grandmother
Book:Selected Poems: 1965-1975
Create image

“What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. Literature is not only a mirror; it is also a map, a geography of the mind. Our literature is one such map, if we can learn to read it as our literature, as the product of who and where we have been. We need such a map desperately, we need to know about here, because here is where we live. For the members of a country or a culture, shared knowledge of their place, their here, is not a luxury but a necessity. Without that knowledge we will not survive.”

IfsKnowsNeedsMindPersonsHas BeensCountryCultureLiteratureLostPositionProductsMembersRelationMirrorsLuxuryMapsTerritoryGeographyLost Person
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“I was unfair to him, of course, but where would I have been without unfairness? In thrall, in harness. Young women need unfairness, it's one of their few defenses. They need their callousness, they need their ignorance. They walk in the dark, along the edges of high cliffs, humming to themselves, thinking themselves invulnerable.”

ThinkingNeedsHas BeensYoungCoursesDarkWalksIgnoranceEdgesDefenseUnfairYoung WomenCliffsHarnessUnfairnessHummingCallousness
Book:Cat's Eye
Create image

“You're sad because you're sad. It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical. Go see a shrink or take a pill, or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll you need to sleep. Well, all children are sad but some get over it. Count your blessings. Better than that, buy a hat. Buy a coat or a pet. Take up dancing to forget.”

NeedsWellsChildrenAgeSleepForgetSadnessBlessingDancingPetHatsOver ItChemicalsHugCoatsGet OverPsychicsPillsShrinksDollsCount Your BlessingsSleep Well
Book:Morning in the Burned House
Create image

“When they came to harvest my corpse (open your mouth, close your eyes) cut my body from the rope, surprise, surprise: I was still alive. Tough luck, folks, I know the law: you can't execute me twice for the same thing. How nice. I fell to the clover, breathed it in, and bared my teeth at them in a filthy grin. You can imagine how that went over. Now I only need to look out at them through my sky-blue eyes. They see their own ill will staring then in the forehead and turn tail Before, I was not a witch. But now I am one.”

KnowsNeedsLooksStillsBodyEyeLawTurnsNiceCuttingAliveImagineSkyMouthsToughBlueLuckSurpriseFolksIllTeethStaringWitchTailsHarvestRopeCorpsesForeheadsBlue EyesFilthyIll WillClovers
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.”

IfsNeedsBelieveI CanRealStoriesLeftChancePicksReal Life
Book:The Handmaid's Tale
Create image

“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

“You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.”

PeopleNeedsWritingMeanBookHelpingRealityBitsPlansLatterGamblingWorking ItLunchGrammarPensionFree LunchThesaurusPension Plans
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“They are hypocrites, they think the Church is a cage to keep God in, so he will stay locked up there and not go wandering about the earth during the week, poking his nose into their business, and looking in the depths and darkness and doubleness of their hearts, and their lack of true charity; and they believed they need only be bothered about him on Sundays when they have their best clothes on and their faces straight, and their hands washed and their gloves on, and their stories all prepared.”

ThinkingLoveNeedsHeartStoriesHandsAgeEarthFacesChurchDarknessWeekClothesPreparedCharityDepthWanderNosesSundayLockedCagesHypocriteBotheredGlovesLocked Up
Book:Alias Grace: A Novel
Create image