Books Quotes by Margaret Atwood

Every novel is-at the beginning-the same opening of a door onto a completely unknown space.

— Margaret Atwood

Literature is not only a mirror; it is a map, a geography of the mind.

— Margaret Atwood

for me the novel is a social vehicle, it reflects society.

— Margaret Atwood

Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it.

— Margaret Atwood

I was kidnapped by literature at a young age and never wanted to be ransomed.

— Margaret Atwood

I have a big following among the biogeeks of this world. Nobody ever puts them in books.

— Margaret Atwood

I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.

— Margaret Atwood

The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.

— Margaret Atwood

Writing is alone, but I don't think it's lonely. Ask any writer if they feel lonely when they're writing their book, and…

— Margaret Atwood

Writers and books are cheap dates, especially when you compare the cost of a book with a ticket to the opera -…

— Margaret Atwood

“Love was merely a tool, smiles were another tool, they were both just tools for accomplishing certain ends. No magic, merely chemicals.”

— Margaret Atwood

Reading is one of the most individual things that happens. So every reader is going to read a piece in a slightly…

— Margaret Atwood

I'm interested in the Gothic novel because it's very much a woman's form. Why is there such a wide readership for books…

— Margaret Atwood

You quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves.

— Margaret Atwood

“I thought, men who changed their names were likely to be con-men, criminals, undercover agents or magicians, whereas women who changed their…

— Margaret Atwood

“Nor did I make any distinctions between great literature and any other kind. I just liked reading.”

— Margaret Atwood

For every age there is a popular idea about what madness is, what causes it, and how a mad person should look…

— Margaret Atwood

I myself discovered many authors through school reading lists and through school anthologies. The positives are: young readers can find the world…

— Margaret Atwood

If I pick up a book with vampires on the cover, I want there to be vampires. If I pick up a…

— Margaret Atwood

There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet an author because you like…

— Margaret Atwood

Sometimes reactions can be quite surprising: readers like things that you, the author, feel you've barely gotten away with; or they dislike…

— 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…

— Margaret Atwood

Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Second, they think somebody's…

— Margaret Atwood

There's a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you…

— Margaret Atwood

“Why do authors wish to pretend they don’t exist? It’s a way of skinning out, of avoiding truth and consequences. They’d like…

— Margaret Atwood

I never have [suffered writer’s block], although I’ve had books that didn’t work out. I had to stop writing them. I just…

— Margaret Atwood

Books are frozen voices, in the same way that musical scores are frozen music. The score is a way of transmitting the…

— Margaret Atwood

What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see…

— Margaret Atwood

There are novels that end well, but in between there are human beings acting like human beings. And human beings are not…

— Margaret Atwood

“What did they want from it? Lechery, smut, confirmation of their worst suspicions. But perhaps some of them wanted, despite themselves, to…

— Margaret Atwood

The future of narrative? Built in, part of the human template. Not going away. The future of the codex book, with pages…

— Margaret Atwood

You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book,…

— Margaret Atwood

“Rosalind Porter: As a writer, how important do you feel it is to engage with the digital revolution? Margaret Atwood: I don’t…

— Margaret Atwood

“I reached the privy and emptied the slop pail, and so forth. And so forth, Grace? asks Dr.Jordan. I look at him.…

— Margaret Atwood

Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.

— Margaret Atwood

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

— Margaret Atwood

Show me a character totally without anxieties and I will show you a boring book.

— Margaret Atwood

“It was as if they could read each other’s minds. No, not minds: each other’s mindlessness.”

— Margaret Atwood

I think the book you always like best is the one you're about to write.

— Margaret Atwood

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea.

— Margaret Atwood