Quote

For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.... I think it's very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there and wait for a wave, and when it comes it takes you somewhere and you don't know where it'll go.

Margaret Atwood

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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
Dream
Somewhere
Writing
Wait
Much
Losing
Really
Control
Think
Takes
Thinking
Waiting
Surfing
Like
Comes
Dreaming
Experience
Wave

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

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To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self.
Margaret Atwood
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I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.
Margaret Atwood
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Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.
Margaret Atwood
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Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody--a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules.
Margaret Atwood
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I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.
Margaret Atwood
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we lived in the gaps between the stories
Margaret Atwood
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Don't let the bastards grind you down.
Margaret Atwood
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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
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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
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What a moron I was to think you were sweet and innocent, when it turns out you were actually college-educated the whole time!
Margaret Atwood
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Gravity works in your life, the notion of free will works in your life, however problematic it may at times be.
Margaret Atwood
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In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
Margaret Atwood
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That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.
Margaret Atwood
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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
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The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wrong.
Margaret Atwood
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Poetry isn't written from the idea down. It's written from the phrase, line and stanza up, which is different from what your teacher taught you to do in school.
Margaret Atwood
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I think every age lives in a blend of technology so there's always older ones mixed in with newer ones, and when the new technology goes down, the immediate fallback position is either that technology just before that or one several technologies back.
Margaret Atwood
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Powerlessness and silence go together.
Margaret Atwood
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Writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated deep down, by a fear or and fascination with mortality - by a desire to make the risky trip to the underworld and to bring something or someone back from the dead.
Margaret Atwood
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There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democratic. Everybody shits.
Margaret Atwood