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

The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but 'Am I really that boring?'

Margaret Atwood

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

Margaret Atwood

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - wi...

Margaret Atwood

Storytelling is a very old human skill that gives us an evolutionary advantage. If you can tell young people how you kill an emu, acted out in song or dance, or that Uncle George was eaten by a croc over there, don't go there to swim, then those youn...

Margaret Atwood

Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don't fit in?

Margaret Atwood

I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply a vehicle for private expression, but that it also exists for social examination. I firmly believe this.

Margaret Atwood

Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome.

Margaret Atwood

Our problem right now is that we're so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there's a little utopia.

Margaret Atwood

If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.

Margaret Atwood

Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I'm a realist.

Margaret Atwood

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

Margaret Atwood

Social media is called social media for a reason. It lends itself to sharing rather than horn-tooting.

Margaret Atwood

You're never going to kill storytelling, because it's built into the human plan. We come with it.

Margaret Atwood

Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are described as equals. If you walk into a cathedral and look at the decorations of early Christianity, there are vines, animals, creatures and birds thriving al...

Margaret Atwood

I'm a person of whim, and easily distracted. I don't like multitasking. When I'm doing one thing, I like to do just that thing.

Margaret Atwood

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

Margaret Atwood

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

Margaret Atwood

We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups.

Margaret Atwood

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Margaret Atwood

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space.

Margaret Atwood

I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.

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