Quotessence
Home / Authors / Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsPeopleThinkingKnowsWritingWayWantMenBookSaidHumansFeelsKindStoriesAgeLoveHas BeensLooksNeedsWomen

Famous Margaret Atwood Quotes

“As I was whizzing around the United States on yet another demented book tour, getting up at four in the morning to catch planes, doing two cities a day, eating the Pringle food object out of the mini-bar at night as I crawled around on the hotel room floor, too tired even to phone room service, I thought, 'There must be a better way of doing this'.”

WayTwoBookStatesNightUnitedRoomsCitiesMorningUnited StatesFourObjectsEatingTiredPhonesBarsPlanesHotelBetter WaysHotel RoomsDementedRoom ServicePringles
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“In Heaven, there are no debts - all have been paid, one way or another - but in Hell there's nothing but debts, and a great deal of payment is exacted, though you can't ever get all paid up. You have to pay, and pay, and keep on paying. So Hell is like an infernal maxed-out credit card that multiplies the charges endlessly.”

WayHas BeensHeavenDealsPayHellPaidCreditDebtCardsOne WayPaymentCredit Card
Book:Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
Create image

“Books are frozen voices, in the same way that musical scores are frozen music. The score is a way of transmitting the music to someone who can play it, releasing it into the air where it can once more be heard. And the black alphabet marks on the page represent words that were once spoken, if only in the writer's head. They lie there inert until a reader comes along and transforms the letters into living sounds. The reader is the musician of the book: each reader may read the same text, just as each violinist plays the same piece, but each interpretation is different.”

IfsWayMayBookDifferentPlayLyingSoundBlackVoicePiecesHeardAirReaderMusicianPagesLettersMarkMusicalScoreInterpretationFrozenAlphabetViolinist
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“When we cracked the genetic DNA code, opened the big Pandora's box, and it really did become possible to produce chimeras, my ears shot up. Having been brought up among the biologists and having followed various debates about ways to improve the human template and other debates about the true nature of our nature, I began seriously to wonder: What if? We hold in our hands a tool that is more powerful - for good or ill - than any we have wielded before.”

IfsWayHumansHandsBigsPowerfulWonderProduceShotsToolsEarsIllBoxesVariousDebateCodeWhat IfDnaTrue NatureCrackedBiologistPandoraChimeraPandora's Box
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“The interesting thing about the religious component, for me, is that Jesus hardly mentions sex at all. He's pretty interested in the poor, he's pretty interested in selling your worldly goods and storing up riches in heaven. However, religious fundamentalists have made it all about sex, and that's like saying, "Look at the sex and we're just not going to talk about what you may be doing in a financial way that is sinful."”

WayLooksMayMadeJesusHeavenSexReligiousInterestingPoorFinancialRichesSellingMade ItGoodsWorldlyComponentsInteresting Things
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“Some of the old diseases that we think are gone - case in point, measles - are back, now that somebody has spread around, in a very wicked way, the idea that these inoculations were making children autistic. Now we're getting outbreaks that are killing children. The end result is, if you create a population that lacks immunity, and diseases are still there, you're going to get outbreaks and you're going to get death.”

IfsThinkingWayChildrenStillsIdeasEndsResultsCasesGoneDiseaseKillingPopulationSpreadWickedAutisticEnd ResultsImmunityOutbreaksMeaslesWicked Ways
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“When we're good, we're very, very good, and when we're bad, we're horrid. This is not news, because we're so much more inventive and we have two hands, the left and the right. That is how we think. It's all over our literature, and it's all over the way we arrange archetypes, the good version, the bad version, the god, the devil, the Abel, the Cain, you name it. We arrange things in pairs like that because we know about ourselves.”

ThinkingKnowsWayTwoHandsLiteratureNamesLeftNewsDevilVery GoodVersionsPairsArchetypeCainTwo HandsAbel
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“The film [Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth] opens with an Albanian blood feud and goes on to delve into, for instance, prison systems, underpaid tomato pickers, the gulf oil spill. It's all woven together in a sensuous, oblique way that's not the same as the single-message kind of documentary we're used to, with an "answer" at the end. It's more like an exploration. Sort of like what you do with Birth of a Nation.”

WayKindEndsTogetherFilmUsedNationsSidesWealthAnswersBloodGoes OnBirthMessagesShadowPrisonDebtOilInstanceExplorationDocumentariesWovenSpillsTomatoesSensuousPaybackFeudsOil SpillUnderpaidAlbanianPrison SystemShadow Side
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“She wasn't ready to settle down, she told her friends. That was one way of putting it. Another was would have been that she had not found anyone to settle down with. There had been several men in her life, but they hadn't been convincing. They'd been somewhat like her table - quickly acquired, brightened up a little, but temporary. The time for that kind of thing was running out, however. She was tired of renting.”

MenWayLoveKindLittlesHas BeensRunningFoundReadyTablesTiredOne WaySettlingTemporaryConvincingLike HerSettling DownReady To Settle Down
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down.”

MenWayWantHumansSoulEnoughLightUsedNightLeftWalksBehindsCasesWanderFasterLeft BehindHuman SoulHere And ThereMarshes
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“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.”

WayMeanSidesHalfImpossibleAirColorShapesTongueGesturesFlavorNuance
Book:The Handmaid's Tale
Create image

“He has to find more and better ways of occupying his time. His time, what a bankrupt idea, as if he's been given a box of time belonging to him alone, stuffed to the brim with hours and minutes that he can spend like money. Trouble is, the box has holes in it and the time is running out, no matter what he does with it.”

IfsWayDoeIdeasMatterRunningGivenHoursTroubleMinutesNo Matter WhatBoxesHolesBelongingBetter WaysTime Is Running OutTime Running Out
Book:Oryx And Crake
Create image

“Soon it will be daybreak. Soon the day will break. I can't stop it from breaking in the same way it always does, and then from lying there broken; always the same day, which comes around again like clockwork. It begins with the day before the day before, and then the day before, and then it's the day itself. A Saturday. The breaking day. The day the butcher comes.”

WayDoeI CanLyingBreakBrokenSaturdayButchersClockworkDaybreak
Book:Alias Grace: A Novel
Create image