Screw poetry, it’s you I want, your taste, rain on you, mouth on your skin. — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives. — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“How much longer can I get away with being so fucking cute? Not much longer.” — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems. — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“Here is a handful of shadow I have brought back to you: this decay, this hope, this mouth- ful of dirt, this… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“She talks with wolves, without knowing what sort of beasts they are: Where have you been all my life? they ask. Where… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a grey moth and let go. You could… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
Don't be married to a line or verse if it can't rhyme, fit the meter, or doesn't fit the outline. — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“This world is not enough, but it will have to do. You can either hold on or let go.” — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
I feel that the task of criticizing my poetry is best left to others (i.e. critics) and would much rather have it… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
The truth, it seems, is not just what you find when you open a door: it is itself a door, which the… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“I reach out in love, my hands are guns, my good intentions are completely lethal.” — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“with shrunken fingers we ate our oranges and bread, shivering in the parked car; though we know we had never been there… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“ Eating Fire Eating fire is your ambition: to swallow the flame down take it into your mouth and shoot it forth,… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
Like many modern poets, I tend to conceal rhymes by placing them in the middle of lines, and to avoid immediate alliteration… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
When I was sixteen, it was simple. Poetry existed; therefore it could be written; and nobody had told me — yet —… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
Like all twenty-one-year-old poets, I thought I would be dead by thirty, and Sylvia Plath had not set a helpful example. For… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
Make the verses flow together. If a following verse has nothing to do with the previous, you may lose our listener/reader. You… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“Here the children have a custom. After the celebration of evil they take those vacant heads that shone once with such anguish… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“The poems that used to entrance me in the days of Miss Violence now struck me as overdone and sickly. Alas, burthen,… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“Once in a while, though, he went on binges. He would sneak into bookstores or libraries, lurk around the racks where the… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
In high school, in 1956, at the age of sixteen, we were not taught "creative writing." We were taught literature and grammar.… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
I did not know that 'poetess' was an insult, and that I myself would some day be called one. I did not… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
Plato said that poets should be excluded from the ideal republic because they are such liars. I am a poet, and I… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“ Variation on the Word Sleep I would like to watch you sleeping, which may not happen. I would like to watch… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“SPRING POEM It is spring, my decision, the earth ferments like rising bread or refuse, we are burning last year's weeds, the… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“One young fellow pointed to another steamer in the distance, and said it was the Lady of the Lake, a United States… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“There is the staircase, there is the sun. There is the kitchen, the plate with toast and strawberry jam, your subterfuge, your… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“UP You wake up filled with dread. There seems no reason for it. Morning light sifts through the window, there is birdsong,… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“CELL Now look objectively. You have to admit the cancer cell is beautiful. If it were a flower, you'd say, How pretty,… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“The imperfect is our paradise. —WALLACE STEVENS, “The Poems of Our Climate,” 1938.” — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
I became a poet at the age of sixteen. I did not intend to do it. It was not my fault. — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
Kill what you can't save what you can't eat throw out what you can't throw out bury What you can't bury give… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
making final judgements about poets, cities or regions on the basis of an anthology is always dangerous: anthologies are mirages created, finally,… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“I'm fine," said Pilar, "for the moment. And the moment is the only time we can be fine in.” — Margaret Atwood Copy Share
And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional. — Margaret Atwood Copy Share
“Mary: Some call this "Eve's curse," but I think that is stupid because the real curse of Eve was having to put up with… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share
“The birds were singing around me, but I reflected that the very birds were strangers to me, for I did not even know their… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share
“Strange how we decorate pain. These ribbons, for instance, and the small hard teardrops of blood. Who are they for? Do we think the… — margaret atwood Copy Share
I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me. — Margaret Atwood Copy Share
“Back at home they drew the curtains and read, with disapproval, with relish, with avidity and glee - even the ones who'd never thought… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share
All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share
“Simon walks back to the house alone. The night is clear and warm, with a moon, almost full, enclosed in a nimbus of mist;… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share
“There is indeed something delightful about being able to combine obedience and disobedience in the same act.” — Margaret Atwood Copy Share
“Every time the women appear, Snowman is astonished all over again. They're every known colour from the deepest black to whitest white, they're various… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share
Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it. — Margaret Atwood Copy Share
“The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting,… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share
“She knows she's deceiving herself about that, but she prefers to deceive herself. She desperately needs to believe such pure joy is still possible.” — Margaret Atwood Copy Share
