Quote

It is my contention that the process of reading is part of the process of writing, the necessary completion without which writing can hardly be said to exist.

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
Process
Part
Without
Contention
Writing
Completion
Hardly
Exist
Necessary
Reading

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

Image
There is no fool like an educated fool.
Margaret Atwood
Image
A truth should exist, it should not be used like this. If I love you is that a fact or a weapon?
Margaret Atwood
Image
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
Image
The cemetery has ... an inscription: 'Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will Fear No Evil, For Thou Art With Me.' Yes, it does feel deceptively safer with two but Thou is a slippery character. Every Thou I've known has had a way of going missing.
Margaret Atwood
Image
A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women.
Margaret Atwood
Image
As human beings, we are always torn between individual freedom and the ability of choose our actions, and the need for at least enough social structure so that anarchy, chaos, and warlordery - or the war of all against all - can be avoided.
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
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
Everybody acts as if they have free will. They act as if they can make these decisions do they know they don't? I think there's been some back-down on the idea that everything is determined.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Roughing it builds a boy's character, but only certain kinds of roughing it.
Margaret Atwood
Image
In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys.
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
You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.
Margaret Atwood
Image
We are very short on organs, and the pig solution is probably a lot better than the human clone solution - though maybe not for the pigs.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.
Margaret Atwood
Image
When we're young, we like happy endings. When we're a little older, we think happy endings are unrealistic and so we prefer bad but credible endings. When we're older still, we realize happy endings aren't so bad after all.
Margaret Atwood
Image
As I was whizzing around the United States on yet another demented book tour, getting up at four in the morning to catch planes, doing two cities a day, eating the Pringle food object out of the mini-bar at night as I crawled around on the hotel room floor, too tired even to phone room service, I thought, 'There must be a better way of doing this'.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Winning intoxicates you, and numbs you to the sufferings of others.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Where there's a doctor it's always a bad sign. Even when they are not doing the killing themselves it means a death is close, and in that way they are like ravens or crows.
Margaret Atwood
Image
All observations of life are harsh, because life is. I lament that fact, but I cannot change it.
Margaret Atwood