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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
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Margaret Atwood
Age: 84
Born: 1939
Born: November 18
Essayist
Inventor
Literary Critic
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Ottawa (Ontario)
Margaret Eleanor Atwood
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Poetry
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Phrases
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More quotes by Margaret Atwood
It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography — but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off.
Margaret Atwood
You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.
Margaret Atwood
Karen wasn't hard, she was soft, too soft. A soft touch. Her hair was soft, her smile was soft, her voice was soft. She was so soft there was no resistance. Hard things sank into her, they went right through her, and if she made a real effort, out the other side. Then she didn't have to see them or hear them, or even touch them.
Margaret Atwood
Fiction is not necessarily about what you know, it's about how you feel. That is the truth about fiction, and the other truth is that all science is a tool, and we use our tools not to actualise what we know, but to implement how we feel.
Margaret Atwood
Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody--a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules.
Margaret Atwood
Every novel is-at the beginning-the same opening of a door onto a completely unknown space.
Margaret Atwood
And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.
Margaret Atwood
My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one of us could have gone either way.
Margaret Atwood
You can think clearly only with your clothes on.
Margaret Atwood
To take that risk, to offer life and remain alive, open yourself like this and become whole.
Margaret Atwood
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
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
We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat.
Margaret Atwood
There's something final about saying you were married once. It's like saying you were dead once. It shuts them up.
Margaret Atwood
Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.
Margaret Atwood
Writing is alone, but I don't think it's lonely. Ask any writer if they feel lonely when they're writing their book, and I think they'll say no.
Margaret Atwood
poetry is where the language is renewed.
Margaret Atwood
...and nostalgia swept through Jimmy like a sudden hunger.
Margaret Atwood
Writers and books are cheap dates, especially when you compare the cost of a book with a ticket to the opera - or an NHL game.
Margaret Atwood
I'm a Red Tory. To get a fix on this category, you have to go back to the 19th century. The Tories were the ones who believed that those in power had a responsibility to the community, that money should not be the measure of all things.
Margaret Atwood
