Quote

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

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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
Stand
Largest
Books
Vocation
Written
Contemplating
Asks
Arrogance
Anything
Add
Find
Library
Book
Humility
Really
Writer

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

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Snowman wakes before dawn.
Margaret Atwood
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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
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we lived in the gaps between the stories
Margaret Atwood
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When I was 16 I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines. My main feedback came from my English teacher, Miss Bessie B. Billings, who said, 'I can't understand this at all, dear, so it must be good.
Margaret Atwood
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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
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There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.
Margaret Atwood
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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
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I think the book you always like best is the one you're about to write.
Margaret Atwood
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We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
Margaret Atwood
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It made him feel invisible—not that he wanted to feel anything else.
Margaret Atwood
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Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering unlike love.
Margaret Atwood
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You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer, an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.
Margaret Atwood
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That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.
Margaret Atwood
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Even in the tragedies, [William] Shakespeare always put in parts for the comic actors because his audience was mixed. He puts in people who talk like aristocrats. He puts in idiots and fools.
Margaret Atwood
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No one knows what cuases an outer landscape to become an inner one.
Margaret Atwood
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Laughter may instruct but it may also conceal, defending the joker against anger and retaliation: a game is only a game.
Margaret Atwood
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Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.
Margaret Atwood
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I was unfair to him, of course, but where would I have been without unfairness? In thrall, in harness. Young women need unfairness, it's one of their few defenses. They need their callousness, they need their ignorance. They walk in the dark, along the edges of high cliffs, humming to themselves, thinking themselves invulnerable.
Margaret Atwood
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But the adjectives change,” said Jimmy. “Nothing’s worse than last year’s adjectives.
Margaret Atwood
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You can’t buy it, but it has a price,” said Oryx. “Everything has a price.
Margaret Atwood