A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. — 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
Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“The choices that bedevil the writer bedevil the translator ten times over.” — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“All writers must go from now to once upon a time; all must take care not to be captured and held immobile… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“She had an idea, but it was the wrong idea. It was hardly even an idea, just a white idea balloon with… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
Things musicals taught me: All your problems will go away if you sing about it. — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
If you're waiting for the perfect moment, you'll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated deep down, by a fear or and fascination with mortality -… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
I'm not an activist by nature. I am suspicious of Utopian thinking and equally suspicious of its alternate. I would prefer to… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“I knelt to examine the floor, and there it was, in tiny writing, quite fresh it seemed, scratched with a pin or… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
Ah men, why do you want all this attention? I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutely… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
When you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question.… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
It had helped to keep her sane, that writing. Then, when time had begun again and real people had entered it, she'd… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn't puppet their views is seen as an apostate,… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“They told us to depend on memory, because nothing written down could be relied on. The Spirit travels from mouth to mouth,… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch.… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. All of them? Sure, he says. Think… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
When people in my generation started to write, we did not actually have much of a movie industry, much of a theater… — 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
While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me - drawing on my… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
Every ending is arbitrary, because the end is where you write The end. A period, a dot of punctuation, a point of… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“A writer's age at the time of a work's composition is never irrelevant.” — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
You might 'write from the heart,' but you'd better polish with your brain. — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
Writing is very improvisational. It's like trying to fix a broken sewing machine with safety pins and rubber bands. A lot of… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“Is that what writing amounts to? The voice your ghost would have, if it had a voice?” — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
Writing... is an act of faith: I believe it's also an act of hope, the hope that things can get better than… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
I think the book you always like best is the one you're about to write. — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
All writers must go from now to once a upon a time; all must go from here to there; all must descend… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
“If writing novels - and reading them - have any redeeming social value, it's probably that they force you to imagine what… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television - there wasn't a lot… — 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
Teaching other people to write is not something I can do. The only kind of advice I can give them will be… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control… I think it's very much like dreaming or like… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
It's rather useless to write a gripping narrative with nothing in it but climate change because novels are always about people even… — Margaret Atwood Copy Share Image
I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, 'Nobody under 40,'… — 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
