Quote

Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.

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
Stories
Road
Twisted
Way
Garden
Yearning
Forward
Glass
Loss
Paradise
Along
Glasses
Journey
Drive
Story
Misery
Walled
Happiness
Regret
Journeys

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

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For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.
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It's clear, it's fresh, like a mint candy.
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Winning intoxicates you, and numbs you to the sufferings of others.
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We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
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Though as he'd say, what is 'belief' but a willingness to suspend the negatives?
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Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.
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How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.
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If you're waiting for the perfect moment, you'll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There's nothing foolproof.
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This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.
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To want is to have a weakness.
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I was delighted with the film [Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth] it almost made me want to be a film-maker!
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How shrunk, how dwindled, in our times Creation's mighty seed - For Man has broke the Fellowship With murder, lust, and greed.
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Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space.
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Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blur the edges then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it's noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear.
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Write down the thoughts and even more, write down a specific line. If you don't, it'll fly away forever.
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But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.
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Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.
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When I was 16 I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines. My main feedback came from my English teacher, Miss Bessie B. Billings, who said, 'I can't understand this at all, dear, so it must be good.
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I am rather saddened at the end of a book. I think most writers find this. It's like a friend departing on a voyage.
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Disease has always been a much bigger killer of human beings than wars.
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