Parenting Quotes by Margaret Atwood

His father was self-made, but his mother was constructed by others, and such edifices are notoriously fragile.

— Margaret Atwood

“Besides, who would think of marrying a mothball? A question my mother put to me often, later, in other forms.”

— Margaret Atwood

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

— Margaret Atwood

Your friend is intellectually honourable," Jimmy's mother would say. "He doesn't lie to himself.

— Margaret Atwood

“What thumbsuckers we all are...when it comes to mothers.”

— Margaret Atwood

“It is just passing the buck, as children do, to mothers. I’ve”

— Margaret Atwood

Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hard-shelled, firmly closed.

— Margaret Atwood

They all disowned their parents long ago, the way you are supposed to.

— Margaret Atwood

“My mother said Aunt Pauline meant kindly but had standars, which were all very well for those that could afford them.”

— Margaret Atwood

“They did not set out to disappoint their father, not on purpose, but neither did they wish to shoulder the lumpy, enervating…

— Margaret Atwood

All fathers are invisible in daytime; daytime is ruled by mothers and fathers come out at night. Darkness brings home fathers, with…

— Margaret Atwood

“Humanity is so adaptable, my mother would say. Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a…

— Margaret Atwood

“After they had skated around the pond several times, my father asked my mother to marry him. I expect he did it…

— Margaret Atwood

My parents were gardeners themselves, and perforce they used environmental techniques because it was during the war, and you didn't have the…

— Margaret Atwood

“Mother, I think. Wherever you may be. Can you hear me? You wanted a women’s culture. Well, now there is one. It…

— Margaret Atwood

No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way…

— Margaret Atwood

“if the teenage kids want to carouse, that's where they do it. They make bonfires, and drink too much and smoke dope,…

— Margaret Atwood

“My parents are like younger, urchinlike brothers and sisters whose faces are dirty and who blurt out humiliating things that can neither…

— Margaret Atwood

I feel despised there, for having so little money; also for once having had so much. I never actually had it, of…

— Margaret Atwood

“My mother took the train to Halifax to see my father off. It was crammed with men en route to the Front;…

— Margaret Atwood

“Their mother died early, and not in a good way. Not that anyone dies in a good way, Tin footnotes to himself,…

— Margaret Atwood

“There were a few other moves of his father's he could do without as well - the sucker punches, the ruffling of…

— Margaret Atwood

“No mother is ever, completely, a child’s idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way…

— Margaret Atwood

“I want my father to be just my father, the way he has always been, not a separate person with an earlier,…

— Margaret Atwood

“Sometimes she would cry. I was so lonely, she'd say. You have no idea how lonely I was. And I had friends,…

— Margaret Atwood

“A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women. Not that your father wasn't a nice guy and all, but...…

— Margaret Atwood

“At school, he enacted a major piece of treachery against his parents. His right hand was Evil Dad, and his left was…

— Margaret Atwood

“I know more about my father than I used to know: I know he wanted to be a pilot in the war…

— Margaret Atwood

There's more than one way to skin a cat, my father used to say; it bothered me, I didn't see why they…

— Margaret Atwood

“You're not my real parents, every child has thought. I'm not your real child. But with orphans, it's true. What freedom, to…

— Margaret Atwood

Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences…

— Margaret Atwood

“No mother is ever, completely, a child’s idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way…

— Margaret Atwood

“All those years I'd kept an outline of my father in my head, like a chalk line enclosing a father-shaped space. When…

— Margaret Atwood

What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of…

— Margaret Atwood

“Nate stares at his mother, who however looks just the same as she has always looked. It’s not only the revelation but…

— Margaret Atwood

My father was a forest entomologist, which means he was aware that spraying forests for spruce budworm was counterproductive in that it…

— Margaret Atwood

“Every child should have love, every person should have it. She herself would rather have had her mother's love - the love…

— Margaret Atwood