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If he wants to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before him have made the same life choice.
Margaret Atwood
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Margaret Atwood
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: November 18
Essayist
Inventor
Literary Critic
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Ottawa (Ontario)
Margaret Eleanor Atwood
Country
Made
Life
Asshole
Choice
Wants
Millions
Choices
Free
More quotes by Margaret Atwood
My brother and I were both teenage writers, and he was, I have to say, better than I was, but he went into science, and I went into writing.
Margaret Atwood
art happens. It happens when you have the craft and the vocation and are waiting for something else, something extra, or maybe not waiting in any case it happens. It's the extra rabbit coming out of the hat, the one you didn't put there.
Margaret Atwood
I look up at the ceiling, tracing the foliage of the wreath. Today it makes me think of a hat, the large-brimmed hats women used to wear at some period during the old days: hats like enormous halos, festooned with fruit and flowers, and the feathers of exotic birds hats like an idea of paradise, floating just above the head, a thought solidified.
Margaret Atwood
I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices, or a voice. I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over.
Margaret Atwood
In theory I can do almost anything certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as possible. I pretend to myself that I would be quite happy in a hermit's cave, living on gruel, if someone else would make the gruel. Gruel, like so many other things, is beyond me.
Margaret Atwood
If a stranger taps you on the ass and says, How's the little lady today! you will probably cringe. But if he's an American, he's only being friendly.
Margaret Atwood
These things you did were like prayers you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.
Margaret Atwood
But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men.
Margaret Atwood
Moira was like an elevator with open sides. She made us dizzy.
Margaret Atwood
Don't eat anything you aren't prepared to kill. Don't kill anything you aren't prepared to eat.
Margaret Atwood
I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply a vehicle for private expression, but that it also exists for social examination. I firmly believe this.
Margaret Atwood
There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.
Margaret Atwood
There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.
Margaret Atwood
For if the world treats you well, Sir, you come to believe you are deserving of it.
Margaret Atwood
I stand on the corner, pretending I am a tree.
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
If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.
Margaret Atwood
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
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
You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.
Margaret Atwood
