Quote

This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.

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
Happens
Two
Cordelia
Women
Giggling
Something
Tea
Never
Miss
Missing
Happen
Gone

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

Image
Come away with me, he said, we will live on a desert island. I said, I am a desert island. It was not what he had in mind.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I always thought eating was a ridiculous activity anyway. I'd get out of it myself if I could, though you've got to do it to stay alive, they tell me.
Margaret Atwood
Image
And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.
Margaret Atwood
Image
As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.
Margaret Atwood
Image
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.
Margaret Atwood
Image
This above all, to refuse to be a victim.
Margaret Atwood
Image
The facts of this world seen clearly are seen through tears.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Short forms are returning online. Interactivity is coming back it was always there in oral storytelling. Each form has its pluses and its minuses.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Her glass wings are gone.
Margaret Atwood
Image
There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.
Margaret Atwood
Image
This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year's threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future the place of caught breath.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Children were vehicles for passing things along. These things could be kingdoms, rich wedding gifts, stories, grudges, blood feuds. Through children, alliances were forged through children, wrongs were avenged. To have a child was to set loose a force in the world.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Eating is our earliest metaphor, preceding our consciousness of gender difference, race, nationality, and language. We eat before we talk.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I don't think it's a question of whether you eat meat. It's a question of what kind of meat, and where it comes from.
Margaret Atwood
Image
If a god showed up every time you put a quarter in the prayer slot it wouldn't be God, it would be a puppet that you could control by doing that...that would make the deity subservient to you. So it wouldn't be a deity would it?
Margaret Atwood
Image
You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.
Margaret Atwood
Image
He has to find more and better ways of occupying his time. His time, what a bankrupt idea, as if he's been given a box of time belonging to him alone, stuffed to the brim with hours and minutes that he can spend like money. Trouble is, the box has holes in it and the time is running out, no matter what he does with it.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Writing is alone, but I don't think it's lonely. Ask any writer if they feel lonely when they're writing their book, and I think they'll say no.
Margaret Atwood