Quote

When any civilization is dust and ashes, he said, art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.

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
Words
Ashes
Admit
Left
Images
Art
Dust
Music
Defined
Human
Structure
Humans
Civilization
Structures
Meaning
Imaginative

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

Image
Although from you I far must roam, do not be broken hearted. We two, who in the souls are one, are never truly parted.
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
There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I did not know how to paint or even what to paint, but I knew I had to begin.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Jimmy had been full of himself back then, thinks Snowman with indulgence and a little envy. He’d been unhappy too, of course. It went without saying, his unhappiness. He’d put a lot of energy into it.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Publishers are in business to make money, and if your books do well they don't care if you are male, female, or an elephant.
Margaret Atwood
Image
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
Image
If your not annoying somebody, you're not alive.
Margaret Atwood
Image
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.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Disease has always been a much bigger killer of human beings than wars.
Margaret Atwood
Image
The objects I chose were designed to hold something, but I didn't fill them up. They remained empty. They were little symbolic shrines to thirst.
Margaret Atwood
Image
All it takes,” said Crake, “is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they focus on different areas of life on earth.
Margaret Atwood
Image
we lived in the gaps between the stories
Margaret Atwood
Image
Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering Mine!Mine!
Margaret Atwood
Image
Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I stand on the corner, pretending I am a tree.
Margaret Atwood
Image
More powerful than God, more evil than the Devil the poor have it, the rich lack it, and if you eat it you die?
Margaret Atwood
Image
Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.
Margaret Atwood