"Perhaps they were looking for passion; perhaps they delved into this book as into a mysterious parcel - a gift box at the bottom of which, hidden in l...

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 else. Which increasingly is something we all need to know.
~ Margaret Atwood ~












If writing novels - and reading them - have any redeeming social value, it's probably that they forc...
Show MoreMore Margaret Atwood quotes
"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.
"The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some...
"I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story, because after all I want you to hear it….By telling you anythin...
"It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are t...
"Writing poetry is a state of free float
"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.
"What did they want from it? Lechery, smut, confirmation of their worst suspicions. But perhaps some of them wanted, despite themselves, to be seduced....
"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.
"The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.
"Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.
"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...