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A reader can never tell if it's a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you're reading it, they're the same. It's a thimble. It's in the book.
Margaret Atwood
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Margaret Atwood
Age: 84
Born: 1939
Born: November 18
Essayist
Inventor
Literary Critic
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Ottawa (Ontario)
Margaret Eleanor Atwood
Reading
Tell
Book
Real
Never
Time
Thimble
Imaginary
Reader
More quotes by Margaret Atwood
Science is not something that exists apart from human beings. It's one of the things we do as human beings, and we always have done science and technology in some form.
Margaret Atwood
Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I'll be dead,' you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar.
Margaret Atwood
The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don't think I solve problems in my poetry I think I uncover the problems.
Margaret Atwood
As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist.
Margaret Atwood
We are a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.
Margaret Atwood
Keep an eye on the weather, which is changing faster than predicted, and on the new diseases escaping or being made, even as we speak. It's a race between new tech and biosphere bankruptcy, I'd say.
Margaret Atwood
Our biggest technology that we ever, ever invented was articulated language with built-out grammar. It is that that allows us to imagine things far in the future and things way back in the past.
Margaret Atwood
There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democratic. Everybody shits.
Margaret Atwood
Even an obvious fabrication is some comfort when you have few others.
Margaret Atwood
Love is giving, marriage is buying and selling. You can't put love into a contract.
Margaret Atwood
The truth, it seems, is not just what you find when you open a door: it is itself a door, which the poet is always on the verge of going through.
Margaret Atwood
You can’t buy it, but it has a price,” said Oryx. “Everything has a price.
Margaret Atwood
Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress.
Margaret Atwood
Her glass wings are gone.
Margaret Atwood
I'm not senile, I snapped. If I burn the house down it will be on purpose.
Margaret Atwood
I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.
Margaret Atwood
She knows the rituals, she knows how we're supposed to be behaving...But I think these things are impenetrable and fraudulent, and I can't do them without feeling I'm acting.
Margaret Atwood
Teaching other people to write is not something I can do. The only kind of advice I can give them will be trite by its nature. Of course, read a lot, write a lot. The kind of advice I wish I had been given is all of a practical nature, having to do with publishers and agents.
Margaret Atwood
The fact is that blank pages inspire me with terror. What will I put on them? Will it be good enough? Will I have to throw it out?
Margaret Atwood
Some cleric putting a match to her. /Neither of them looks happy about it. /Once lit, she'll burn like a book, /like a book that was ever finished, /like a locked-up library.
Margaret Atwood
