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

More quotes by 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
Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.
Margaret Atwood
Image
For the children with their greedy little mouths represent the future, which like time itself will devour all now alive.
Margaret Atwood
Image
The short answer to 'Why do you write' is - I suppose I write for some of the same reasons I read: to live a double life to go places I haven't been to examine life on earth to come to know people in ways, and at depths, that are otherwise impossible to be surprised.
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
Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.
Margaret Atwood
Image
More of your brain is involved when reading than it is when you watch television... because you are supplying just about everything... you're a creator.
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
You can’t buy it, but it has a price,” said Oryx. “Everything has a price.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Canadians are fond of a good disaster, especially if it has ice, water, or snow in it. You thought the national flag was about a leaf, didn't you? Look harder. It's where someone got axed in the snow.
Margaret Atwood
Image
We shouldn't have been so scornful we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Screw poetry, it’s you I want, your taste, rain on you, mouth on your skin.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I'm with the spirit of Earth-Day-yet-to-come. Nobody can really predict the future, all you can do is look at trends, and that could change at any moment.
Margaret Atwood
Image
What we share may be a lot like a traffic accident but we get one another. We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I was kidnapped by literature at a young age and never wanted to be ransomed.
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
It's very hard for students not to be in debt unless they've got big scholarships or rich parents. And it's called investing in your future, but like any investment it's risky because your future is an unknown quantity. However, if you don't invest in your future, you may be flipping hamburgers for the rest of your life. So it's a real dilemma.
Margaret Atwood
Image
If you want to be a writer, you should go into the largest library you can find and stand there contemplating the books that have been written. Then you should ask yourself, 'Do I really have anything to add?' If you have the arrogance or the humility to say yes, you will know you have the vocation.
Margaret Atwood
Image
The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.
Margaret Atwood