Quote

I was horrified in high school by the fate of the hanged maids at the end of the Odyssey it seemed unfair to me, even then.

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
Even
Horrified
Maids
Unfair
Seemed
Fate
High
Ends
Hanged
School
Odyssey

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

Image
Oppression involves a failure of the imagination: the failure to imagine the full humanity of other human beings.
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 grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Walter turned on the radio: electric violins wailing, twisted romance, the four-square beat of heartbreak. Trite suffering, but suffering nonetheless. The entertainment business. What voyeurs we have all become.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space.
Margaret Atwood
Image
This above all, to refuse to be a victim.
Margaret Atwood
Image
expectation isn't the same as desire
Margaret Atwood
Image
What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves -- our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies.
Margaret Atwood
Image
oil paints...the look of licked lips.
Margaret Atwood
Image
You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.
Margaret Atwood
Image
If you disagree with your government, that's political. If you disagree with your government that is approaching theocracy, then you're evil.
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
There is so much going on all over the world that it's impossible for one person to keep up. And I can't.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.
Margaret Atwood
Image
My brother and I were both teenage writers, and he was, I have to say, better than I was, but he went into science, and I went into writing.
Margaret Atwood
Image
All fat women look the same they all look 42.
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
Don't be married to a line or verse if it can't rhyme, fit the meter, or doesn't fit the outline.
Margaret Atwood
Image
So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with. That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.
Margaret Atwood
Image
The animals have no need for speech, why talk when you are a word.
Margaret Atwood