Quote

Don't be married to a line or verse if it can't rhyme, fit the meter, or doesn't fit the outline.

Margaret Atwood

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Lines
Meter
Doesn
Outlines
Writing
Verse
Verses
Rhyme
Fit
Line
Married
Outline

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

Image
A prison does not only lock its inmates inside, it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.
Margaret Atwood
Image
There's nothing like drawing a thing to make you really see it.
Margaret Atwood
Image
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
Margaret Atwood
Image
To take that risk, to offer life and remain alive, open yourself like this and become whole.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I didn't want him to become gray and multi-dimensional and complicated like everyone else. Was every Heathcliff a Linton in disguise?
Margaret Atwood
Image
A lot of the stuff Kafka said he thought was hilariously funny.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Storytelling is a very old human skill that gives us an evolutionary advantage. If you can tell young people how you kill an emu, acted out in song or dance, or that Uncle George was eaten by a croc over there, don't go there to swim, then those young people don't have to find out by trial and error.
Margaret Atwood
Image
This above all, to refuse to be a victim.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave - The water below is as dark as the grave, And maybe you'll sink in your little blue boat - It's hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat
Margaret Atwood
Image
Whatever the scientists may come up with, writers and artists will continue to portray altered mental states, simply because few aspects of our nature fascinate people so much. The so-called mad person will always represent a possible future for every member of the audience - who knows when such a malady may strike?
Margaret Atwood
Image
I was delighted with the film [Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth] it almost made me want to be a film-maker!
Margaret Atwood
Image
The fabric of democracy is always fragile everywhere because it depends on the will of citizens to protect it, and when they become scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend it, it can go very quickly.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Fiction is not necessarily about what you know, it's about how you feel. That is the truth about fiction, and the other truth is that all science is a tool, and we use our tools not to actualise what we know, but to implement how we feel.
Margaret Atwood
Image
If he wants to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before him have made the same life choice.
Margaret Atwood
Image
In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys.
Margaret Atwood
Image
The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wrong.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Your hand is a warm stone I hold between two words.
Margaret Atwood
Image
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
Image
Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it's much the same.
Margaret Atwood