Canadian novelist, poet, and literary critic (1939- )
To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self.
MARGARET ATWOOD
"Marrying the Hangman", Selected Poems
One of the things about totalitarianism is that people disappear, and you can't find out what happened to them.
MARGARET ATWOOD
"Margaret Atwood Is Still Seeing the Future", The Ringer, April 27, 2017
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.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Cat's Eye
I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Lady Oracle
The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Blind Assassin
The sitting room is subdued, symmetrical; it's one of the shapes money takes when it freezes.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Handmaid's Tale
The Human moral keyboard is limited ... there's nothing you can play on it that hasn't been played before. And, my dear Friends, I am sorry to say this, but it has its lower notes.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
For every age there is a popular idea about what madness is, what causes it, and how a mad person should look and behave; and it's usually these popular ideas, rather than those of medical professionals, that turn up in songs and stories and plays and books.
MARGARET ATWOOD
"Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For"
Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backward in time and exist in two places at once.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Cat's Eye
I am certain that a Sewing Machine would relieve as much human suffering as a hundred Lunatic Asylums, and possibly a good deal more.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Alias Grace
What is needed for really good tyranny is an unquestionable idea or authority. Political disagreement is political disagreement. But political disagreement with a theocracy is heresy.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Moving Targets: Writing with Intent
Hunger is a powerful reorganizer of the conscience.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
As God contains all good things, He must also contain a sense of playfulness -- a gift he has shared with Creatures other than ourselves, as witness the tricks Crows play, and the sportiveness of Squirrels, and the frolicking of Kittens.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
The minimalist life. Pleasure is an egg. Blessings that can be counted, on the fingers of one hand.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Handmaid's Tale
Malicious rumours can spread confusion. A careless remark can be as a cigarette butt casually tossed into the dumpster, smouldering until it bursts into flame and engulfs a neighborhood.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Alias Grace
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.
MARGARET ATWOOD
On Writing Poetry
When I was sixteen, it was simple. Poetry existed; therefore it could be written; and nobody had told me -- yet -- the many, many reasons why it could not be written by me.
MARGARET ATWOOD
On Writing Poetry
Love's never a fair trade.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood