Quotes by Margaret Atwood

About Margaret Atwood:

Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award several times, winning twice. In 2001 she was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. She is also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada's writing community. Among innumerable contributions to Canadian literature, she was a founding trustee of the Griffin Poetry Prize.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

Margaret Atwood

My parents are like younger, urchinlike brothers and sisters whose faces are dirty and who blurt out humiliating things that can neither be anticipated nor controlled. I sigh and make the best of it. I feel I’m older than they are, much older. I fe...

Margaret Atwood

It isn't chic for women to be drunk. Men drunks are more excusable, more easily absolved, but why? It must be thought they have better reasons.

Margaret Atwood

This murdered girl troubles me. After the first shock, nobody at school says much about her. Even Cordelia does not want to talk about her. It’s as if this girl has done something shameful, herself, by being murdered.

Margaret Atwood

Something is unfolding, being revealed to me. I see that there's a whole world of of girls and their doings that has been unknown to me, and that I can be part of without making any effort at all. I don't have to keep up with anyone, run as fast, aim...

Margaret Atwood

There is never only one, of anyone

Margaret Atwood

I am a believer in sensible choices, so different from many of my own. Also in sensible names for children.

Margaret Atwood

I know more about my father than I used to know: I know he wanted to be a pilot in the war but could not, because the work he did was considered essential to the war effort… I know he grew up on a farm in the backwoods of Nova Scotia, where they di...

Margaret Atwood

I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices, or a voice. I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over.

Margaret Atwood

I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something ...

Margaret Atwood

In my dreams of this city I am always lost.

Margaret Atwood

I want my father to be just my father, the way he has always been, not a separate person with an earlier, mythological life of his own. Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understan...

Margaret Atwood

They are boiling with the pressured energy of explosive forces confined in a small space, and with the fervor of all religious movements in their early, purist stages. It is not enough to give lip service and to believe in equal pay: there has to be ...

Margaret Atwood

Forgiving men is so much easier than forgiving women.

Margaret Atwood

This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.

Margaret Atwood

I consider telling my brother, asking him for help. But tell him what exactly? I have no black eyes, no bloody noses to report: Cordelia does nothing physical. If it was boys, chasing or teasing, he would know what to do, but I don’t suffer from bo...

Margaret Atwood

I’m not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don’t know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder.

Margaret Atwood

There I am, in the Grade Six class picture, smiling broadly. , is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hardshelled, firmly closed.

Margaret Atwood

Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.

Margaret Atwood

I used to jog but it's bad for the knees. Too much beta carotene turns you orange, too much calcium gives you kidney stones. Health kills.

Margaret Atwood

Potential has a shelf life.

Margaret Atwood

Author Bio

  • NameMargaret Atwood
  • DescriptionCanadian writer
  • BornNovember 18, 1939
  • CountryCanada
  • ProfessionWriter; Poet; Novelist; Educationist
  • WorksThe Handmaid's Tale; Cat's Eye; Alias Grace; The Blind Assassin; Oryx And Crake; Surfacing
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; Companion Of The Order Of Canada; Order Of Ontario; Molson Prize; Humanist Of The Year; Prince Of Asturia Literary Prize