Sauve qui peut. To survive
we’d all turn thief
and rascal, or so says the fox,
with her coat of an elegant scoundrel,
her white knife of a smile,
who knows just where she’s going:
to steal something
that doesn’t belong to her -
some chicken, or one more chance,
or other life.
Margaret Atwood
Related
There's something about her.
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It's not her beauty or race,
J.A. ANUM Edie Sedgwick (1943-1971)
I don't know how she did it. Fire
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PATTI SMITH MY MOTHER GETS DRESSED
It is impossible for my mother to do even
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DAPHNE GOTTLIEB Keep an eye out for her,
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AKASH MANDAL By the Valg, three were made,
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...
Some women survive
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IJEOMA UMEBINYUO Voodoo Girl
Her skin is white cloth,
and she's all sewn apart
and she has many colore...
TIM BURTON Your daughter is ugly.
She knows loss intimately,
carries whole cities in her belly.
...
WARSAN SHIRE A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
enough money within her control to move out
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She doesn’t we...
ANNE BEREST AUDREY DIWAN CAROLINE DE MAIGRET AND SOPHIE MAS Constantly risking absurdity
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LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI So you want to know all about me, Who
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What chance meeting of brush and canvas painte...
ELLEN HOPKINS somebody/ anybody
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...
HAROLD MONRO An angel for some,
a demon for some,
for me, it’s heart of the one.
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ABHISHEK KUMAR SINGH It’s not her shape,
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Neither is it t...
PIERRE ALEX JEANTY over the decades
her books became
such a part
of her
that
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CANDIS TERRY Lark’s Song
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A huntress swift, who do...
D. ALEXANDER NEILL I've traveled all over the world for the Institute, but I never dreamed I'd meet someone like you."<...
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What chance meeting of brush and canvas painte...
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DAVE MATTHES I smile at her. "You're an angel."
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from heaven is sent,
more perfect than all
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ROMAN PAYNE No Difference
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Big as a giant,
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a...
JANDY NELSON Love Sorrow
Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has...
MARY OLIVER No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No ti...
W.H. DAVIES After another ten minutes, the gates of thievery would open just a crack, and Liesel Meminger would ...
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"That seemes to happen a lot."
"It wasn't my fault."
...
RICHELLE MEAD It was the exact opposite
for me. At first all I
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ELLEN HOPKINS Duende
I can't remember her name.
It's not as though I've been in bed
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JACK GILBERT Leisure
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and star...
W.H. DAVIES Nobody really knows her
Except the chosen few
Her secrets are kept hidden
Behind that...
SIMONE ELKELES I don't love her anymore
So
Why should I walk
Nights
By the tavern
Where I ...
ORHAN VELI KANıK Not only did
I love her,
but I could tell
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More...
CHRISTOPHER POINDEXTER Her close friends have gathered.
Lord, ain't it a shame
Grieving together
Sharing the...
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON You see her
and ascend into love.
You become enchanted,
a found madman.
In yo...
KAMAND KOJOURI While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free,...
IRVING BERLIN and you invented me
and I invented you
and that's why we don't
get along
on this...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI I was told
The average girl begins to plan her wedding at the age of 7
She picks the color...
RUDY FRANCISCO Believe me when I say:
'Out of all those around,
she’s the best locksmith in town.' KAMAND KOJOURI I. At Tea
THE kettle descants in a cosy drone,
And the young wife looks in her husba...
THOMAS HARDY She grew tired of shielding her body,
For societal expectation and propriety,
Double stand...
JACQUELINE SIMON GUNN THAT crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,
Her soul...
W.B. YEATS She walks,
on the streets,
with a face that,
doesn't belong.
It smiles more than...
JASLEEN KAUR GUMBER BLACK AND WHITE
I was born into
A religion of Light,
But with so many oth...
SUZY KASSEM I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
Write, for instance: "The night is full of ...
PABLO NERUDA Sick of body, unable to rise up, vehemently intoxicated without wine . . .
And it is as t...
AL-MUTANABBī there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
t...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI if i
or anybody don't
know where it her his
my next meal's coming from...
E.E. CUMMINGS Studies show:
Intelligent girls are more depressed
Because they know
What the world i...
EMILIE AUTUMN Every time you
tell your daughter
you yell at her
out of love
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RUPI KAUR She’s a lunatic,” says Conrad.
“Absolutely insane,” says Guntram.
“Either comple...
EMILY LLOYD-JONES A bird who hurt her wing,
now forgotten how to fly.
A song she used to sing,
bu...
LANG LEAV we are all like poems.
some of us rhyme. some don’t.
some are Pulitzer prizes
som...
SANOBER KHAN Her phone beeps and she pulls it out again. She frowns.
I give her a side-eye. “Everyth...
ASHLEY POSTON Tonight I Can Write
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for e...
PABLO NERUDA To an Isle in the Water
Shy one, shy one,
Shy one of my heart,
She moves in t...
W.B. YEATS STAINS
With red clay between my toes,
and the sun setting over my head,
the ghost of ...
BRENDA SUTTON ROSE he turns to the sunlight,
And lifts her face up,
She searches for the light,
The ligh...
ASHISH BHARDWAJ and anyway it’s just the same old story --
a few people just trying,
one way or another,...
MARY OLIVER You can shed tears that she is gone,
or you can smile because she has lived.
You can close ...
DAVID HARKINS KINGDOM OF THE WOMB
From her thighs, she gives you life
And how you treat she who gi...
SUZY KASSEM Power
Living in the earth-deposits of our history
Today a backhoe divul...
ADRIENNE RICH Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
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an...
PABLO NERUDA What does Éloa mean?”
He narrowed his gaze, answered her literally. “It’s the name...
SARAH MACLEAN I'd been making desicions for days.
I picked out the dress Bailey would wear forever-
a bl...
JANDY NELSON Her moral obligation
to keep our hearts entwined.
Her preeminent love,
smelling like ...
BRIAN D'AMBROSIO THE soul should always stand ajar,
That if the heaven inquire,
He will not be obliged to ...
EMILY DICKINSON Women Are Not Roses
Women have no
beginning
only continual
flows.
ANA CASTILLO Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make ...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Raeanne
Mirror, Mirror
When I look into a
mirror,
it is her face I see. ELLEN HOPKINS MOM
Wholeheartedly,
She loved me-
And inspired me-
With transcending devot...
GIORGE LEEDY There once was a girl who found herself dead.
She peered over the ledge of heaven
and saw ...
JANDY NELSON She is that maze,
the one you would love to chase.
She is the faith,
quite missing no...
JASLEEN KAUR GUMBER In the Novel
He described her mouth as full of ashes.
So when he kissed her finally<...
SUSAN STEWART The Quiet World
In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more, JEFFREY MCDANIEL As I saw it,
all my mother's life, my father
held her down, like
lead strapped to ...
LOUISE GLüCK Lady of the silver moon
Enchantress of the night
Protect me and mine within this circle fa...
MADELYN ALT From her thighs, she gives you life
And how you treat she who gives you life
Shows how muc...
SUZY KASSEM It's slowly breaking her down
Consuming her breath
Fighting her strength
She doesn't ...
EVY MICHAELS Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Have you seen my daughter?”
“Daughter?” I’m the worst liar ever. I stare at Sarah...
SUZANNE YOUNG -A Word On Statistics-
Out of every hundred people,
those who always kn...
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA GOD made a wonderful mother,
A mother who never grows old;
He made her smile of the sunshine,...
PAT O'REILLY She asks why I like her.
Might as well ask
Why I breathe.
Maybe tomorrow I won't
GAIL CARSON LEVINE Hemingway is overrated,
Twain is even more lost at sea,
And all truths point to the mouth ...
DAVE MATTHES No Child of Yours
I saw a child hide in the corner
So I went and asked her name
TERESA COOPER BLESSINGS ARE IMMEASURABLE
You can
Lose a child
Or a parent,
The lov...
SUZY KASSEM And who are you, the proud Lord said
that I must bow so low?
Only a cat of a different co...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN ...my body has become
another country
and I feel like an unemployed
illegal alien
PATRICK CALIFIA-RICE That's a revealing question because most Americans simply know very little about a complex, immensel...
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL She lends her pen,
to thoughts of him,
that flow from it,
in her solitary.
LANG LEAV He gave her a sly, sideways look. "Did you
bring it?"
"My list? Heavens, no. What ca...
JULIA QUINN When she comes
She pulls you close
She breathes in short bursts
Her eyes close
H...
HENRY ROLLINS You might belong in Gryffindor,
Where dwell the brave at heart,
Their daring, nerve, and c...
J.K. ROWLING
More Margaret Atwood
Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome.
MARGARET ATWOOD Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I'm a realist.
MARGARET ATWOOD Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they ...
MARGARET ATWOOD A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you.
MARGARET ATWOOD If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schiz...
MARGARET ATWOOD The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many...
MARGARET ATWOOD An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.
MARGARET ATWOOD If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.
MARGARET ATWOOD Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space be...
MARGARET ATWOOD I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did,...
MARGARET ATWOOD When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.
MARGARET ATWOOD You're never going to kill storytelling, because it's built into the human plan. We come wit...
MARGARET ATWOOD Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no yo...
MARGARET ATWOOD Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do ...
MARGARET ATWOOD Don't let the bastards grind you down.
MARGARET ATWOOD When you can't tell the difference between your own pleasure and your pain then you're an addict.
MARGARET ATWOOD The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but ...
MARGARET ATWOOD Once upon a time you could wander around one country, then the next and then maybe you'd go to Engla...
MARGARET ATWOOD They've removed anything you can tie a rope to.
MARGARET ATWOOD Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all...
MARGARET ATWOOD No one knows what cuases an outer landscape to become an inner one.
MARGARET ATWOOD The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for ...
MARGARET ATWOOD Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you c...
MARGARET ATWOOD Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories,...
MARGARET ATWOOD Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells ...
MARGARET ATWOOD Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.
MARGARET ATWOOD Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
MARGARET ATWOOD If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you ...
MARGARET ATWOOD But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind eve...
MARGARET ATWOOD I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed an...
MARGARET ATWOOD I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until yo...
MARGARET ATWOOD If i thought this would never happen again I would die.
But this is wrong, nobody dies from lac...
MARGARET ATWOOD Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic...
MARGARET ATWOOD That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even an...
MARGARET ATWOOD There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet a...
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 remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it...
MARGARET ATWOOD Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Wat...
MARGARET ATWOOD Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.
MARGARET ATWOOD The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for lo...
MARGARET ATWOOD A word after a word after a word is power.
MARGARET ATWOOD I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because the...
MARGARET ATWOOD She even had a kind of special position among men: she was an exception, she fitted none of the cate...
MARGARET ATWOOD Men are not to be told anything they might find too painful; the secret depths of human nature, the ...
MARGARET ATWOOD The basic Female body comes with the following accessories: garter belt, panty-girdle, crinoline, ca...
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.'...
MARGARET ATWOOD Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-size...
MARGARET ATWOOD Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
MARGARET ATWOOD A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. P...
MARGARET ATWOOD I hate to tell you this, but you will never actually go to a galaxy far, far away and encounter Dart...
MARGARET ATWOOD Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are describe...
MARGARET ATWOOD The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.
MARGARET ATWOOD In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
MARGARET ATWOOD I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.
MARGARET ATWOOD Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada,...
MARGARET ATWOOD Sometimes there would be couples, arm in arm—laughing, happy, amorous. Victims of an enormous frau...
MARGARET ATWOOD I've never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are...
MARGARET ATWOOD Was this a betrayal, or was it an act of courage? Perhaps both. Neither one involves forethought: su...
MARGARET ATWOOD The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is...
MARGARET ATWOOD Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee... I hold inside it the clues and solutions and ...
MARGARET ATWOOD They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it mark...
MARGARET ATWOOD Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, ...
MARGARET ATWOOD If you're put on a pedestal, you're supposed to behave yourself like a pedestal type of pers...
MARGARET ATWOOD If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People...
MARGARET ATWOOD I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually b...
MARGARET ATWOOD Every aspect of human technology has a dark side, including the bow and arrow.
MARGARET ATWOOD Vampires get the joy of flying around and living forever, werewolves get the joy of animal spirits. ...
MARGARET ATWOOD Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.
MARGARET ATWOOD You will always have partial points of view, and you'll always have the story behind the story t...
MARGARET ATWOOD Canada was built on dead beavers.
MARGARET ATWOOD How shrunk, how dwindled, in our times
Creation's mighty seed -
For Man has broke the Fell...
MARGARET ATWOOD She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation.
In spirit she walks the city, traces its...
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 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 My self is a thing that I must now compose...as one composes a speech. What I must present is a 'mad...
MARGARET ATWOOD