Writer Quotes by Margaret Atwood

I was sand, I was snow—written on, rewritten, smoothed over.

— Margaret Atwood

for me the novel is a social vehicle, it reflects society.

— Margaret Atwood

Support your libraries... or else!

— Margaret Atwood

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

— Margaret Atwood

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

— Margaret Atwood

“Some people write letters, in the library.”

— Margaret Atwood

Write down the thoughts and even more, write down a specific line. If you don't, it'll fly away forever.

— Margaret Atwood

No male writer is likely to be asked to sit on a panel addressing itself to the special problems of a male…

— Margaret Atwood

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

— Margaret Atwood

“It’s always encouraging to be told that it is intellectually acceptable to read the sorts of things that you like to read…

— Margaret Atwood

Good writing takes place at intersections, at what you might call knots, at places where the society is snarled or knotted up.

— Margaret Atwood

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

— Margaret Atwood

Don't wait until you're 'in the mood.' Get into the mood by writing.

— Margaret Atwood

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

— Margaret Atwood

Writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated deep down, by a fear or and fascination with mortality -…

— Margaret Atwood

All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters…

— Margaret Atwood

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

“Back at home they drew the curtains and read, with disapproval, with relish, with avidity and glee - even the ones who'd…

— Margaret Atwood

“If writing novels - and reading them - have any redeeming social value, it's probably that they force you to imagine what…

— 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

There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet an author because you like…

— Margaret Atwood

I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply…

— 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

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

— Margaret Atwood

You cannot teach somebody to write a masterpiece, but you can certainly teach them how to improve their writing skills. And you…

— 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

“I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story, because after all I want you…

— Margaret Atwood

There are novels that end well, but in between there are human beings acting like human beings. And human beings are not…

— Margaret Atwood

The one good thing to be said about announcing yourself as a writer in the colonial Canadian fifties is that nobody told…

— 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

“Why do authors wish to pretend they don’t exist? It’s a way of skinning out, of avoiding truth and consequences. They’d like…

— 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 long since decided if you wait for the perfect time to write, you'll never write. There is no time that…

— 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

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer, an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a…

— Margaret Atwood

“A writer's age at the time of a work's composition is never irrelevant.”

— Margaret Atwood

You might 'write from the heart,' but you'd better polish with your brain.

— Margaret Atwood

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

— Margaret Atwood

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea.

— Margaret Atwood

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