Poetry Quotes by Margaret Atwood

Writing poetry is a state of free float.

— Margaret Atwood

“In the east a bank of cloud rises up silently like dark bread.”

— Margaret Atwood

About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives.

— Margaret Atwood

“How much longer can I get away with being so fucking cute? Not much longer.”

— Margaret Atwood

Screw poetry, it’s you I want, your taste, rain on you, mouth on your skin.

— Margaret Atwood

poetry is where the language is renewed.

— Margaret Atwood

I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

— Margaret Atwood

“I reach out in love, my hands are guns, my good intentions are completely lethal.”

— Margaret Atwood

“The imperfect is our paradise. —WALLACE STEVENS, “The Poems of Our Climate,” 1938.”

— Margaret Atwood

The truth, it seems, is not just what you find when you open a door: it is itself a door, which the…

— Margaret Atwood

I became a poet at the age of sixteen. I did not intend to do it. It was not my fault.

— Margaret Atwood

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a…

— Margaret Atwood

“She talks with wolves, without knowing what sort of beasts they are: Where have you been all my life? they ask. Where…

— Margaret Atwood

“Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a grey moth and let go. You could…

— Margaret Atwood

“Here is a handful of shadow I have brought back to you: this decay, this hope, this mouth- ful of dirt, this…

— Margaret Atwood

A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of…

— Margaret Atwood

“I had a boyfriend once who sent me--in a plastic bag, so it wouldn't drip--a real cow's heart with a real arrow…

— Margaret Atwood

“There is a little verse I remember from a child: Needles and pins, needles and pins, When a man marries his trouble…

— Margaret Atwood

Poetry isn't written from the idea down. It's written from the phrase, line and stanza up, which is different from what your…

— Margaret Atwood

“ Eating Fire Eating fire is your ambition: to swallow the flame down take it into your mouth and shoot it forth,…

— Margaret Atwood

Like many modern poets, I tend to conceal rhymes by placing them in the middle of lines, and to avoid immediate alliteration…

— Margaret Atwood

When I was sixteen, it was simple. Poetry existed; therefore it could be written; and nobody had told me — yet —…

— Margaret Atwood

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is…

— Margaret Atwood

In high school, in 1956, at the age of sixteen, we were not taught "creative writing." We were taught literature and grammar.…

— Margaret Atwood

Plato said that poets should be excluded from the ideal republic because they are such liars. I am a poet, and I…

— Margaret Atwood

I did not know that 'poetess' was an insult, and that I myself would some day be called one. I did not…

— Margaret Atwood

“Once in a while, though, he went on binges. He would sneak into bookstores or libraries, lurk around the racks where the…

— Margaret Atwood

“The poems that used to entrance me in the days of Miss Violence now struck me as overdone and sickly. Alas, burthen,…

— Margaret Atwood

“Here the children have a custom. After the celebration of evil they take those vacant heads that shone once with such anguish…

— Margaret Atwood

“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

“One young fellow pointed to another steamer in the distance, and said it was the Lady of the Lake, a United States…

— Margaret Atwood

“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

“ Variation on the Word Sleep I would like to watch you sleeping, which may not happen. I would like to watch…

— 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

“There is the staircase, there is the sun. There is the kitchen, the plate with toast and strawberry jam, your subterfuge, your…

— Margaret Atwood

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

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

“This world is not enough, but it will have to do. You can either hold on or let go.”

— Margaret Atwood

“with shrunken fingers we ate our oranges and bread, shivering in the parked car; though we know we had never been there…

— Margaret Atwood

A suicide is both a rebuke to the living and a puzzle that defies them to solve it. Like a poem, suicide…

— Margaret Atwood