I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television - there wasn't a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.
Margaret Atwood
Related I was born and raised in Ohio. During my childhood, I spent most of my time drawing and reading fair... NATALIE BABBITT I wanted to be an artist. I was studying art. I wanted to be a great painter. When I went into the N... EVAN HUNTER I was born in Somerville, but I don't remember very much about it because we moved from there to... ALAN HOVHANESS I've always felt like there was a lot of hype around me even when there wasn't. I felt like ... CONOR MCGREGOR When I first found out that Superman wasn't real, I was about maybe eight. And I was talking to ... GEOFFREY CANADA To me, there's no point in writing merely to entertain. BEBE MOORE CAMPBELL I thought that some of my best records was when there wasn't a lot of work being done on it, lik... GIL SCOTT-HERON When I began, poetry was very academic. You published little pamphlets from fancy presses. It was ra... JOHN FULLER I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I... PAUL AUSTER No, Margaret Atwood writes literature, whereas I write fiction. I'm from the American Midwest, so li... STELLA ATRIUM I've just finished reading a book about the brilliant Margaret Rutherford. She wasn't a beau... SOPHIE THOMPSON I came from the country, and when I came to the city, I was ridin' high, you know. I was seeing ... JOHN HUNTER If there wasn't no fight, there wasn't no weekend. O. J. SIMPSON I spent a lot of winters in my childhood flying kites with my brother, with my cousins, with friends... KHALED HOSSEINI Really, I don't like to do any household chores. There was a time when I loved to cook, but that... ELAINE PAGELS I was born in Somerville, but I don't remember very much about it because we moved from there to Arl... ALAN HOVHANESS I never thought I'd see the day when there are no radio broadcasts out of Hollywood. This is a compa... RONNIE BRADFORD I'm very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching telev... JOHNNY CASH When I grew up there was no web, blogging or tweeting. In fact, where I grew up there was not even t... INDRA NOOYI I didn't know a time when there wasn't a war because I spent all my time from the age of two... DAVID BAILEY I wasn't prepared for the environment I encountered trying to break into television news. In the... GRETCHEN CARLSON When I was 8, I was reading 'Gone with the Wind' and 'Pride and Prejudice' and all t... STEPHENIE MEYER My childhood was great, my family was great. I wasn't in a mansion, but we made it work. RITA ORA There was a time when I wasn't working a lot. It ebbs and flows. Mostly I was just living my lif... MATTHEW PERRY I am less selfish. But I am more insistent on being part of the creative experience. I find I am a b... HELEN SLATER My childhood, I wouldn't say it was bad. It helped me grow up. I stayed out of trouble. My paren... RUSSELL WESTBROOK When he came to television, there was no way I wasn't going to watch. Of course, he delivered ev... JAMES RODAY There was very little art in my childhood. I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn't aware of any... JASPER JOHNS I had a lot of fun driving race cars, but it wasn't my No. 1 priority. CARROLL SHELBY This is mainly because I spend a lot of time writing and so don't have much time to read; I hate... JOHN SLADEK Much of my youth was spent in the parking lot or inside a Dunkin' Donuts. ELI ROTH It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I wa... RITA DOVE When I was younger, I avoided exercise or anything strenuous. I didn't even enjoy walking. As I ... MAEVE BINCHY Writing was not a childhood dream of mine. I do not recall longing to write as a student. I wasn'... JOHN GRISHAM I witnessed a home birth with my sister Khloe and, after seeing it, I felt it wasn't for me. The... KOURTNEY KARDASHIAN A big reason why I'm not a big TV watcher is that in my formative years as a viewer, there wasn&... JACK FALAHEE There wasn't a lot of discipline in my life, and I hated it being imposed on me at school. ALFIE ALLEN When I got diagnosed, the more research I did about it - MS overall, as a subject, as a disease - th... JACK OSBOURNE I wasn't academically successful. And maybe I've spent a lot of my career trying to make up ... ANNA WINTOUR I began writing early - very, very early... I was already writing short stories for the radio and se... WOLE SOYINKA I spent a lot of my childhood in my own head, making up stories. I didn't have a lot of outside ... DIDO ARMSTRONG Like a lot of inwardly drawn young people, I spent a lot of time in libraries. At my high school, I ... HENRY ROLLINS I didn't come east of the Mississippi for the first time in my life until I was 26 years of age,... SAM DONALDSON I don't think I could ever give up music. It's what makes me tick. If there was no music, th... MAGGIE STIEFVATER When I first broke through, there was only NBC, CBS and ABC, and they had news in the morning and in... DICK GREGORY When I founded the first Hard Rock, no one was serving American food in London; McDonald's wasn&... PETER MORTON While I wasn't very good at much else in school, in my creative-writing classes or when we had t... BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Me personally, I want to entertain people above all. When you look back at burlesque in history and ... DITA VON TEESE I wasn't good with authority, went to lots of schools, didn't like the fact that there was n... NIGELLA LAWSON I have a lot of feminist idols. My favorite thing about growing up in Arkansas - well, not favorite ... BETH DITTO I started writing the one-sentence stories when I was translating 'Swann's Way.' There w... LYDIA DAVIS I came from a very loving home, had a happy life with no great aspirations, but going to the seminar... JOHNNY VEGAS I wasn't a very good student in elementary school and had a hard time with reading and writing. PATRICIA POLACCO I maybe missed money in my childhood, but I didn't miss love, that's for sure. My dad wasn... OLGA KURYLENKO In the days when I was the big hero, the money wasn't much. Nobody made anything on television i... EDD BYRNES When David Cross and I made 'Todd Margaret,' we spent time there. We were shocked and happy ... WILL ARNETT I spent my childhood outdoors on my grandparents' farm. I learned to ride a motorbike when I was... MIRANDA KERR There is no way, believe me, despite my name being Winfield, and loving the game dearly. It wasn'... DAVE WINFIELD I know it's surprising, but there is a generation of people who haven't seen a Bond movie. T... DANIEL CRAIG A reputation is what you hear when no one is there to speak for it. JEFFREY FRY You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer...an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to w... MARGARET ATWOOD My father would tell me if I wasn't writing in meter verse, it wasn't poetry. JOHN DARNIELLE When I was starting out, I thought I would go into comedy and there would be a mentor, like the Phil... MIKE BIRBIGLIA 'Dark Shadows' was the spark that lit the fire of my childhood imagination. It wasn't po... WILLIAM J. MANN My earnestness at the injustices I witnessed when I was writing 'Random Family' may have bee... ADRIAN NICOLE LEBLANC There was a guy by the name of Charles Schwab: actually, Charles M. Schwab. I read a lot about him, ... CHARLES SCHWAB I spent most of my life from 24 to 31 at the office. I wasn't going to people's weddings; I ... MEGYN KELLY I keep a lot of things inside. I don't like showing too much emotion. Early in the minor leagues... VERNON WELLS I spent my childhood in northern New York State, and like many kids, bugs and other critters fascina... ROMULUS WHITAKER I was signed to a record label when I was younger. I was in a group, and I just wasn't - persona... TIKA SUMPTER I opened myself to your silences. MARGARET ATWOOD I didn't always want to act. My passion was writing, and it still is one of my primary passions ... BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD Growing up in Hollywood meant there were a lot of film stars' kids at my school - but no conspic... ZOOEY DESCHANEL We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possib... MARY OLIVER I spent all of my childhood at a performance art camp. Putting on plays, it was more like commedia d... TROY GARITY Retiring for good wasn't difficult. I knew at the time it was right. I was no longer capable of ... IAN BOTHAM There was a time in L.A. when I drove to 7-Eleven to go grocery shopping, and I locked my keys in my... WHITNEY CUMMINGS My grandparents live in Cley, and my dad now has the windmill which is a guest house. So I've sp... JAMES BLUNT In the years since I worked with John Hughes, there were many years where I literally had hundred of... ANTHONY MICHAEL HALL When I was 18, I took a trip to Thailand with a friend. We stayed for a month. Bangkok was very raw ... JENNY LEWIS There are 30,000 days in your life. When I was 24, I realized I'm almost 9,000 days down. There ... DREW HOUSTON 'Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Case,' 'The Secret of the Old Clock,' 'Are You The... KARIN SLAUGHTER I was brought up in a very poor and very violent household. I spent much of my childhood being afrai... PATRICK STEWART Bottom line is, I didn't return to Apple to make a fortune. I've been very lucky in my life ... STEVE JOBS I wasn't ecstatic about being pregnant - I wasn't somebody who actively wanted kids. Certain... ELIZABETH MCGOVERN I wasn't truly comfortable with myself until I was about 30. I spent so much time and energy won... TORI SPELLING A while ago, I did a television adaptation of 'Bleak House,' and the character I played, as ... CHARLES DANCE Well, I had an immense respect for Cirque du Soleil when I first say them in the '80s on a telev... CRISS ANGEL I prefer that for my own satisfaction over radio, there's no audience. TV, there's no audien... AL LEWIS I have a lot of connection to Pataudi. I have spent a lot of time there and I love the place very mu... SAIF ALI KHAN Watching the Commons tribute to Margaret Thatcher was like being suffocated inside a gigantic sticky... SIMON HOGGART I did make a solo album in my house when I was there. And because I was just afraid of flying, I wou... CHRISTINE MCVIE When I got to New York, I had no place to sleep. The pay from 'Sesame Street' wasn't eno... CAROLL SPINNEY My parents spent an awful lot of money sending me to the best possible schools, and I came out of my... TERRY WOGAN When I was a kid, there was unhappiness in my family - was dealt with partly by escaping to televisi... ROBERT PINSKY There's not a whole lot to do in Athens. When I was 13, I just started entertaining myself by wr... BRITTANY HOWARD I realized that I had screwed up my life living different parts of my life in different places. I wa... JAMES MCGREEVEY It wasn't easy once I started running 20th Century Fox. There were a lot of eyebrows raised, and... RICHARD D. ZANUCK I spent a lot of my childhood not fitting in, in a lot of different ways. WIL WHEATON My mother always kept library books in the house, and one rainy Sunday afternoon - this was before t... BEVERLY CLEARY
More Margaret Atwood
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MARGARET ATWOOD Never pray for justice, because you might get some. MARGARET ATWOOD If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least h... MARGARET ATWOOD I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and... MARGARET ATWOOD A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you MARGARET ATWOOD Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD War is what happens when language fails. MARGARET ATWOOD Miranda nods, because she knows that to be true: noble people don't do things for the money, they si... MARGARET ATWOOD Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. MARGARET ATWOOD This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love. MARGARET ATWOOD I'm a strict, strict agnostic. It's very different from a casual, 'I don't know.'... 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MARGARET ATWOOD You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself. MARGARET ATWOOD Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I c... MARGARET ATWOOD Gardening is not a rational act. MARGARET ATWOOD Second-hand American was spreading over him in patches, like mange or lichen. He was infested, garbl... MARGARET ATWOOD وقتی دردپایان می یابد،دیگر در یاد چه کسی می ماند؟ تنها �... MARGARET ATWOOD We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. MARGARET ATWOOD If social stability goes pear-shaped, you have a choice between anarchy and dictatorship. Most peopl... MARGARET ATWOOD When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling ti... MARGARET ATWOOD We understand more than we know. MARGARET ATWOOD Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down. MARGARET ATWOOD You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their cred... MARGARET ATWOOD You hear doom and gloom about the Internet ruining young people's command of English - that'... MARGARET ATWOOD If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I wa... MARGARET ATWOOD Girl Without Hands Walking through the ruins on your way to work that do not lo... MARGARET ATWOOD '1984' is not a wonder tale. Not only could it happen, but it has happened, but under differ... MARGARET ATWOOD The thing about delirium is you think it's great, but it actually isn't. MARGARET ATWOOD We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we're so dependent on ... MARGARET ATWOOD I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka. MARGARET ATWOOD A divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there's less of you. MARGARET ATWOOD The truly fearless think of themselves as normal. MARGARET ATWOOD Or perhaps she's just softening me up: she's a Baptist, she'd like me to find Jesus, or vice versa, ... MARGARET ATWOOD Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing ove... MARGARET ATWOOD When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like ... MARGARET ATWOOD My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one ... MARGARET ATWOOD The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth. MARGARET ATWOOD I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months... MARGARET ATWOOD If you're waiting for the perfect moment, you'll never write a thing because it will never a... MARGARET ATWOOD Debt is part of the human condition. Civilization is based on exchanges - on gifts, trades, loans - ... MARGARET ATWOOD I particularly like Twitter, because it's short and can be very funny and informative. It's ... MARGARET ATWOOD I do have a life,' says Charis, blinking wet eyes. 'You have a rich inner life,' says Ton... MARGARET ATWOOD Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? MARGARET ATWOOD No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the... MARGARET ATWOOD We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of pr... MARGARET ATWOOD But despite everything, we didn't do badly by one another, we did as well as most. I wish she were h... MARGARET ATWOOD But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No ... MARGARET ATWOOD Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some. MARGARET ATWOOD Our problem right now is that we're so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge n... MARGARET ATWOOD There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind. MARGARET ATWOOD Social media is called social media for a reason. It lends itself to sharing rather than horn-tootin... MARGARET ATWOOD Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide... MARGARET ATWOOD Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself through a window cloud... MARGARET ATWOOD Modesty is invisibility...Never forget it. To be seen—to be seen —is to be...penetrated. W... MARGARET ATWOOD In theory I can do almost anything; certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as po... MARGARET ATWOOD Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on you... MARGARET ATWOOD Sauve qui peut. To survive we’d all turn thief and rascal, or so says the fox, MARGARET ATWOOD Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that. MARGARET ATWOOD But how can you have a sense of wonder if you’re prepared for everything? MARGARET ATWOOD Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, scho... MARGARET ATWOOD A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness. MARGARET ATWOOD The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wron... MARGARET ATWOOD She finds this objectivity of hers, this clarity, almost more depressing than she can bear, not beca... MARGARET ATWOOD Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a ... MARGARET ATWOOD Many believed what they were told: that the welfare of the entire kingdom depended on their selfless... MARGARET ATWOOD She did understand, or at least she understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, ... MARGARET ATWOOD When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be whe... MARGARET ATWOOD We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we're about to do something harmful, t... MARGARET ATWOOD Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide... MARGARET ATWOOD I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing... MARGARET ATWOOD Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you... MARGARET ATWOOD What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams... MARGARET ATWOOD There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's somethin... MARGARET ATWOOD I believe that everyone else my age is an adult whereas I am merely in disguise. MARGARET ATWOOD How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness... MARGARET ATWOOD The society in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied... MARGARET ATWOOD You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly f... MARGARET ATWOOD Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you sa... MARGARET ATWOOD You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t ne... MARGARET ATWOOD But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion.... MARGARET ATWOOD When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things ... MARGARET ATWOOD Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert... MARGARET ATWOOD It wasn't so easy though, ending the war. A war is a huge fire; the ashes from it drift far, and set... MARGARET ATWOOD The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds. MARGARET ATWOOD I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose. MARGARET ATWOOD She knows herself to be at the mercy of events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy. MARGARET ATWOOD Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, t... MARGARET ATWOOD Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert... MARGARET ATWOOD Home is where the heart is, I thought now, gathering myself together in Betty's Luncheonette. I had ... MARGARET ATWOOD Should is a futile word. It's about what didn't happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It... MARGARET ATWOOD What is it the I'll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which i... MARGARET ATWOOD There were a lot of gods. Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything. MARGARET ATWOOD Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. They hurt themselves instead; or else they do it so... MARGARET ATWOOD Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the brig... MARGARET ATWOOD The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by ... MARGARET ATWOOD There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication. MARGARET ATWOOD The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one. MARGARET ATWOOD Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Secon... MARGARET ATWOOD Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. MARGARET ATWOOD We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy? MARGARET ATWOOD The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betr... MARGARET ATWOOD Put yourself in a different room, that's what the mind is for. MARGARET ATWOOD The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose MARGARET ATWOOD I think of this as a democratizing device. MARGARET ATWOOD I'm curious. If someone says 'Don't open that door', I'm right there! MARGARET ATWOOD The main thing is to keep yourself awake [on writing] MARGARET ATWOOD For years I wanted to be older, and now I am. MARGARET ATWOOD He's very in depth, on the dark side. He's interested in structure and how things work. After readin... MARGARET ATWOOD The Orange prize has been pivotal in the careers of many women writers - it's given them that extra ... MARGARET ATWOOD Just think of it as a very, very long pen. MARGARET ATWOOD Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked; as I never was when I was not one MARGARET ATWOOD This above all, to refuse to be a victim. MARGARET ATWOOD We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups. MARGARET ATWOOD A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. MARGARET ATWOOD Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are hum... MARGARET ATWOOD They all disowned their parents long ago, the way you are supposed to MARGARET ATWOOD You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer. MARGARET ATWOOD Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the Un... MARGARET ATWOOD Any death is stupid from the viewpoint of whoever is undergoing it, Adam One used to say, because no... MARGARET ATWOOD Also I could hear Amanda’s voice: Why are you being so weak? Love’s never a fair trade. So Jimmy... MARGARET ATWOOD I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices,... MARGARET ATWOOD Life is warped. I'm just in sync. MARGARET ATWOOD I thought everyone would be familiar with this figure: if I'd studied a thing in school I assumed it... MARGARET ATWOOD We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves. MARGARET ATWOOD My parents are like younger, urchinlike brothers and sisters whose faces are dirty and who blurt out... MARGARET ATWOOD Now we come to forgiveness. Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important thing... MARGARET ATWOOD Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe. MARGARET ATWOOD Human tool-makers always make tools that will help us get what we want, and what we want hasn't chan... MARGARET ATWOOD She doesn't think it's a good idea to know the future, because you can hardly ever change it, so why... MARGARET ATWOOD The possibility of injury or death was a strong attraction: as the online world became more and more... MARGARET ATWOOD