Quote

This has been her problem all her life: picturing other people's responses. She's too good at it. She can picture the response of anyone--other people's reactions, their emotions, their criticisms, their demands--but somehow they don't reciprocate. Maybe they can't. Maybe they lack the gift, if it is one.

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
Anyone
Lack
Picturing
Problem
Response
Reciprocate
Good
Criticism
Criticisms
Life
Picture
Responses
People
Gift
Demands
Demand
Reactions
Emotion
Emotions
Maybe
Somehow

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

Image
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
Image
The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely.
Margaret Atwood
Image
If you want to be a writer, you should go into the largest library you can find and stand there contemplating the books that have been written. Then you should ask yourself, 'Do I really have anything to add?' If you have the arrogance or the humility to say yes, you will know you have the vocation.
Margaret Atwood
Image
When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.
Margaret Atwood
Image
The cat jumps up on the bed and tries to get onto my head. It's his way of telling whether or not i'm dead. If i'm not, he wants to be scratched if i am - he'll think of something
Margaret Atwood
Image
I felt white, drained of blood, cared for, purified. Peaceful.
Margaret Atwood
Image
What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me. I want to steal something.
Margaret Atwood
Image
So much better to travel than to arrive.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Today on the way home, it snows. Big, soft caressing flakes fall onto our skin like cold moths the air fills with feathers.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Just as if you do a mash-up of reality from the point of view of African Americans in this country, you're going to end up with something that will say, This is Black Lives Matter. It's not that people necessarily have started out from that premise. But if you're looking at reality, that will be the result because that is reality.
Margaret Atwood
Image
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
Image
Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate it would be romance, bad luck.
Margaret Atwood
Image
You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.
Margaret Atwood
Image
What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves -- our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.
Margaret Atwood
Image
for me the novel is a social vehicle, it reflects society.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Don't let the bastards grind you down.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Is anything wrong, dear? the old joke went. No, why? You moved. Just don't move.
Margaret Atwood