Book Quotes by Margaret Atwood

I am rather saddened at the end of a book. I think most writers find this. It's like a friend departing on…

— Margaret Atwood

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

— Margaret Atwood

I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.

— Margaret Atwood

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

— 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

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

— Margaret Atwood

The future of the codex book, with pages and so forth? A platform for transmitting narratives. There are others.

— Margaret Atwood

A reader can never tell if it's a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you're reading it, they're…

— Margaret Atwood

“Books and characters in books, pictures and elements in pictures—they all have families and ancestors, just like people.”

— 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

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

Publishers are in business to make money, and if your books do well they don't care if you are male, female, or…

— 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

Reading ... changes you. You aren't the same person after you've read a particular book as you were before, and you will…

— Margaret Atwood

“gazing down at the black water remembering all the stories of women who had thrown themselves into it. They'd done it for…

— 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

We all know that a book is not really a person. It isn’t a human being. But if you are a lover…

— Margaret Atwood

If you want to be a writer, you should go into the largest library you can find and stand there contemplating the…

— Margaret Atwood

I have never had any problems with editors who wanted me to change my methods or point of view. I pay a…

— Margaret Atwood

If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of…

— 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

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

— Margaret Atwood

I have been known to buy e-versions of my books because I was in a hotel room and I needed one right…

— Margaret Atwood

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

The society in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under Perry Miller,…

— Margaret Atwood

I am too old to have ever been very worried about what "genre" any given book of mine might be. I read…

— Margaret Atwood

Some cleric putting a match to her. /Neither of them looks happy about it. /Once lit, she'll burn like a book, /like…

— Margaret Atwood

It doesn't really matter what "genre" your book is. What matters is that it's a good book of its kind. Whatever that…

— Margaret Atwood

Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in…

— Margaret Atwood

If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I want…

— 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

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

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

It was exciting to work with director Jennifer Baichwal, who made Manufactured Landscapes and others, on the film of Payback: Debt and…

— Margaret Atwood