Quote

Poetry isn't written from the idea down. It's written from the phrase, line and stanza up, which is different from what your teacher taught you to do in school.

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
Different
Poetry
Teacher
Taught
Lines
Written
Stanza
Idea
Phrase
School
Phrases
Ideas
Line

More quotes by Margaret Atwood

Image
Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.
Margaret Atwood
Image
... Remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.
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
If one of the arguments against eating meat is to do with cruelty and animal intelligence, then lab meat avoids that. There's also the environmental argument for it.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Our biggest technology that we ever, ever invented was articulated language with built-out grammar. It is that that allows us to imagine things far in the future and things way back in the past.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I don't think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It's essentially just a long narrative form. What you use that long narrative form for can be very different.
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
I began to forget myself in the middle of sentences.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Why aren't we investing more in alternate tech? The Saudi Arabians are, Scottish Power is. I was just there. Could it be that we're counting on the oil going on forever and ever and ever and us having all of it and getting very rich?
Margaret Atwood
Image
History, as I recall, was never this winsome, and especially not this clean, but the real thing would never sell: most people prefer a past in which nothing smells.
Margaret Atwood
Image
If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive.
Margaret Atwood
Image
I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.
Margaret Atwood
Image
If you're waiting for the perfect moment, you'll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There's nothing foolproof.
Margaret Atwood
Image
What you get is no longer what you see.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Without the light, no chance without the dark, no dance.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Some days I do appreciate things more, eggs, flowers, but then I decide I'm only having an attack of sentimentality, my brain going pastel Technicolor, like a beautiful-sunset greeting cards they used to make so many of in California. High-gloss hearts. The danger is grayout.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Your hand is a warm stone I hold between two words.
Margaret Atwood
Image
If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?
Margaret Atwood
Image
Love's never a fair trade.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Knowledge is power only as long as you keep your mouth shut.
Margaret Atwood