Quote

I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it.

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
Left
Refugee
Past
Customs
Seems
Habits
Like
Forced
Habit
Behinds
Quaint
Behind
Refugees
Leave
Obsessive

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

Image
Once a month I wake in the night, slippery with terror. I'm afraid, not because there's someone in the room, in the dark, in the bed, but because there isn't. I'm afraid of the emptiness, which lies beside me like a corpse.
Margaret Atwood
Image
We've learned to see the world in gasps.
Margaret Atwood
Image
So much better to travel than to arrive.
Margaret Atwood
Image
All writers must go from now to once a upon a time all must go from here to there all must descend to where the stories are kept all must take care not to be captured and held immobile by the past.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Winning intoxicates you, and numbs you to the sufferings of others.
Margaret Atwood
Image
As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter.
Margaret Atwood
Image
For if the world treats you well, Sir, you come to believe you are deserving of it.
Margaret Atwood
Image
A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.
Margaret Atwood
Image
That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together no, I'm taking it apart. If you'd wanted the narrative line you should have asked earlier, when I still knew everything and was more than willing to tell. That was before I discovered the virtues of scissors, the virtues of matches.
Margaret Atwood
Image
How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Science never makes things that do not have to do with what we feel, by which I mean what we want and what we fear.
Margaret Atwood
Image
The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don't think I solve problems in my poetry I think I uncover the problems.
Margaret Atwood
Image
All observations of life are harsh, because life is. I lament that fact, but I cannot change it.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings...but there’s something dead about it, something deserted.
Margaret Atwood
Image
You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.
Margaret Atwood
Image
The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Hunger is a powerful reorganizer of the conscience.
Margaret Atwood