Writing Quotes by Margaret Atwood

Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what.

— Margaret Atwood

Blank pages inspire me with terror.

— Margaret Atwood

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

— Margaret Atwood

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

— Margaret Atwood

Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.

— Margaret Atwood

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

— Margaret Atwood

I write as if I've lived a lot of things I haven't lived.

— Margaret Atwood

A word after a word after a word is power.

— 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

Short forms are returning online. Interactivity is coming back; it was always there in oral storytelling.

— 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

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

— 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

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

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

— Margaret Atwood

Ah men, why do you want all this attention? I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutely…

— Margaret Atwood

“I knelt to examine the floor, and there it was, in tiny writing, quite fresh it seemed, scratched with a pin or…

— Margaret Atwood

I'm not an activist by nature. I am suspicious of Utopian thinking and equally suspicious of its alternate. I would prefer to…

— 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

Make the verses flow together. If a following verse has nothing to do with the previous, you may lose our listener/reader. You…

— Margaret Atwood

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television - there wasn't a lot…

— 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

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

— 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

All Creatures know that some must die That all the rest may take and eat; Sooner or later, all transform Their blood…

— 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

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

— Margaret Atwood

“...the values ascribed to the Indian will depend on what the white writer feels about Nature, and America has always had mixed…

— Margaret Atwood

Whatever the scientists may come up with, writers and artists will continue to portray altered mental states, simply because few aspects of…

— Margaret Atwood

“Most of us will. We'll choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the…

— Margaret Atwood

“Rosalind Porter: As a writer, how important do you feel it is to engage with the digital revolution? Margaret Atwood: I don’t…

— Margaret Atwood

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist.…

— Margaret Atwood

“I would like to believe this is a story I'm telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who…

— Margaret Atwood

Writing poetry is a state of free float.

— Margaret Atwood

If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.

— Margaret Atwood

“Some people write letters, in the library.”

— 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