Margaret Atwood Quotes

Perfection exacts a price, but it's the imperfect who pay it

Genius is an infinite capacity for causing pain.

Gender roles suck, " says Swift Fox.Then you should stop playing them, thinks Toby.

Why is it always such a surprise? thinks Toby. The moon. Even though we know it's coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush.

Don’t interfere with false gods, you’ll get the gold paint all over your hands.

I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight.

Galleries are frightening places, places of evaluation, of judgement.

You need to give money when someone gives you a knife. So the bad luck won't cut you. I wouldn't like it for you to be cut by the bad luck, Jimmy.

I want, I don’t want.How can one live with such a heart?

She wasn't stupid. She just didn't want to put her neuron power into long sentences.

Every war is the war for whoever's lived through it.

I've forgotten about these things all winter, but here they are again, and when I see them I remember them, I know them, I greet them as if they are home.

Some people write letters, in the library.

It isn't the sort of thing you ask questions about, because the answers are not usually answers you want to know.

Am I shallow? she asks the mirror. Yes, I am shallow. The sun shines on the ripples where it's shallow. Deep is too dark.

Alcohol's a depressant, it will let me down later.

What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it.

She would roll up her sleeves and dispense with sentimentality, and do whatever blood-soaked, bad-smelling thing had to be done. She would become adept with axes.

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

Pearls are congealed oyster spit.

You think you can get rid of things, and people too--leave them behind. You don't know yet about the habit they have, of coming back.

Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings? To me it's the latter, so I sign up

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.

There are some women who seem to be born without fear just as there are people who are born without the ability to feel pain. ... Providence appears to protect such women maybe out of astonishment.

Fear has a smell as Love does.

The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them there ought to be as many for love.

Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee ... I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it but there's less of you.

Sons branch out but one woman leads to another.

The answers you get from literature depend upon the questions you pose.

For years I wanted to be older and now I am.

A voice is a human gift it should be cherished and used to utter as fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult whereas I am merely in disguise.

The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them there ought to be as many for love.

If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided by one.

Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.