"Writing poetry is a state of free float

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.
~ Margaret Atwood ~












When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be whe...
Show MoreMore Margaret Atwood quotes
"You learn to write by reading and writing, writing and reading. As a craft it's acquired through the apprentice system, but you choose your own teache...
"That is how we writers all started: by reading. We heard the voice of a book speaking to us.
"Writers are much better behaved nowadays, for a couple of reasons. Once upon a time nobody was thinking of a career, unless you lived in New York, so ...
"Good writing takes place at intersections, at what you might call knots, at places where the society is snarled or knotted up.
"Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.
"If writing novels - and reading them - have any redeeming social value, it's probably that they force you to imagine what it's like to be somebody els...
"For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.… I think it’s very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there an...
"Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are r...
"All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.All of them?Sure, he says. Think about it. There's esc...
"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 ...
"A word after a word after a word is power.
"Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out...
"Bless you. Be careful. Anyone intending to meddle with words needs such blessing, such warning.
"All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.