Quote

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 later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand you must see your left hand erasing it.

Margaret Atwood

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Like
Person
Begin
Emerging
Right
Hand
Finger
Must
Read
Date
Writing
Write
Assume
Excusing
Even
Left
Assuming
Erasing
Long
Hands
Otherwise
Scroll
Way
Truth
Fingers
Index
Never
Persons
Later
Ink

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

Image
Where there's a doctor it's always a bad sign. Even when they are not doing the killing themselves it means a death is close, and in that way they are like ravens or crows.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I did ... learn an important distinction in graduate school: a speculation about who had syphilis when is gossip if it's about your friends, a plot element if it's about a character in a novel, and scholarship if it's about John Keats.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Those walls and bars are there for a reason,” said Crake. “Not to keep us out, but to keep them in. Mankind needs barriers in both cases.” “Them?” “Nature and God.” “I thought you didn’t believe in God,” said Jimmy. “I don’t believe in Nature either,” said Crake. “Or not with a capital N.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I would not change [my past work] anymore than I would airbrush a photo of myself.
Margaret Atwood
Image
It made him feel invisible—not that he wanted to feel anything else.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Knowledge is power only as long as you keep your mouth shut.
Margaret Atwood
Image
You're dead, Cordelia.' No I'm not. 'Yes you are. You're dead. Lie down.
Margaret Atwood
Image
All fathers are invisible in daytime daytime is ruled by mothers and fathers come out at night. Darkness brings home fathers, with their real, unspeakable power. There is more to fathers than meets the eye.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Men are not to be told anything they might find too painful the secret depths of human nature, the sordid physicalities, might overwhelm or damage them. For instance, men often faint at the sight of their own blood, to which they are not accustomed. For this reason you should never stand behind one in the line at the Red Cross donor clinic.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.
Margaret Atwood
Image
While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me or not drawing me, drawing on me - drawing on my skin - not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.
Margaret Atwood
Image
There may not be one Truth - there may be several truths - but saying that is not to say that reality doesn't exist.
Margaret Atwood
Image
There is never only one, of anyone
Margaret Atwood
Image
You can wet the rim of a glass and run your finger around the rim and it will make a sound. This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter. I want to be with someone.
Margaret Atwood
Image
The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Axiom: you are a sea. Your eye- lids curve over chaos My hands where they touch you, create small inhabited islands soon you will be all earth: a known land, a country.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Whatever the scientists may come up with, writers and artists will continue to portray altered mental states, simply because few aspects of our nature fascinate people so much. The so-called mad person will always represent a possible future for every member of the audience - who knows when such a malady may strike?
Margaret Atwood
Image
The internet is 95 percent porn and spam
Margaret Atwood
Image
I enjoyed teaching. I liked the students. Having to formulate my ideas about literature made them clearer. I did not particularly enjoy the more bureaucratic aspects of the job. However, if you are teaching fervently, your energy and time are used up at a great rate.
Margaret Atwood
Image
The idea of the chickens with the multiple breasts and thighs came from an urban legend that some fast-food places had developed chickens with four thighs. It wasn't true, but it is a suggestive rumor.
Margaret Atwood