Past Quotes by Margaret Atwood

The past is a closed door.

— Margaret Atwood

A movie about the past is not the same as the past.

— Margaret Atwood

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.

— Margaret Atwood

I didn't much like it, this grudge-holding against the past.

— Margaret Atwood

I would not change [my past work] anymore than I would airbrush a photo of myself.

— Margaret Atwood

“...most people prefer a past is which nothing smells.”

— Margaret Atwood

I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.

— Margaret Atwood

“I have them, these attacks of the past, like faintness, a wave sweeping over my head.”

— Margaret Atwood

When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.

— Margaret Atwood

While in a vintage restaurant..."the past isn't quaint while you're in it. Only at a safe distance, later, when you see it…

— Margaret Atwood

All writers must go from now to once a upon a time; all must go from here to there; all must descend…

— Margaret Atwood

This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past…

— Margaret Atwood

Time folds you in its arms and gives you one last kiss, and then it flattens you out and folds you up…

— Margaret Atwood

Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past—the past of others, loaded onto their shoulders.…

— Margaret Atwood

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you're going to say, 'Where did…

— Margaret Atwood

God gave unto the Animals A wisdom past our power to see: Each knows innately how to live, Which we must learn…

— Margaret Atwood

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what…

— Margaret Atwood

So Crake never remembered his dreams. It's Snowman that remembers them instead. Worse than remembers: he's immersed in them, he'd wading through…

— Margaret Atwood

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

Toast was a pointless invention from the Dark Ages. Toast was an implement of torture that caused all those subjected to it…

— Margaret Atwood

“I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or…

— Margaret Atwood

“The past no longer belongs only to those who once lived it; the past belongs to those who claim it, and are…

— Margaret Atwood

“UP You wake up filled with dread. There seems no reason for it. Morning light sifts through the window, there is birdsong,…

— Margaret Atwood

And sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain.…

— Margaret Atwood

But thoughtless ingratitude is the armour of the young; without it, how would they ever get through life? The old wish the…

— Margaret Atwood

Walking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will…

— Margaret Atwood

He doesn't know which is worse, a past he can't regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at…

— Margaret Atwood

Our biggest technology that we ever, ever invented was articulated language with built-out grammar. It is that that allows us to imagine…

— Margaret Atwood

History, as I recall, was never this winsome, and especially not this clean, but the real thing would never sell: most people…

— Margaret Atwood

“All writers must go from now to once upon a time; all must take care not to be captured and held immobile…

— Margaret Atwood