Quotes By Margaret Atwood

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

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?

The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but 'Am I really that boring?'

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

Myths can't be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time.

Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.

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

All fat women look the same; they all look 42.

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

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

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

A word after a word after a word is power.

I'm the only person you've ever met who has read Longfellow.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

I got into trouble a while ago for saying that I thought the internet led to increased literacy - people scolded me about the shocking grammar to be found online - but I was talking about fundamentals: quite simply, you can't use the net unless you can read.

I'm bad at picking heroes.

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

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

War is what happens when language fails.

Gardening is not a rational act.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

Canada was built on dead beavers.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

I tend to feel if people say they're going to do something, they will, if given the chance.

If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it.

I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.