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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
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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
Past
Recalls
Nothing
Prefer
Real
Sell
Thing
Sells
Never
Smell
Would
Clean
Winsome
People
Especially
Smells
History
Recall
More quotes by Margaret Atwood
Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence.
Margaret Atwood
It made him feel invisible—not that he wanted to feel anything else.
Margaret Atwood
You can't keep a cool head when you're drowning in love. You just trash around a lot and scream, and wear yourself out.
Margaret Atwood
Science is not something that exists apart from human beings. It's one of the things we do as human beings, and we always have done science and technology in some form.
Margaret Atwood
All fathers are invisible in daytime daytime is ruled by mothers and fathers come out at night. Darkness brings home fathers, with their real, unspeakable power. There is more to fathers than meets the eye.
Margaret Atwood
and each of his voices left his body in a different colored soul and floated up towards the sun still singing.
Margaret Atwood
So much better to travel than to arrive.
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
Powerlessness and silence go together.
Margaret Atwood
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
Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.
Margaret Atwood
The goals of the feminist movement have not been achieved, and those who claim we're living in a post-feminist era are either sadly mistaken or tired of thinking about the whole subject.
Margaret Atwood
If you want what's in the package you should at least know how to get the string off, is what I say.
Margaret Atwood
Some cleric putting a match to her. /Neither of them looks happy about it. /Once lit, she'll burn like a book, /like a book that was ever finished, /like a locked-up library.
Margaret Atwood
If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?
Margaret Atwood
Men are not to be told anything they might find too painful the secret depths of human nature, the sordid physicalities, might overwhelm or damage them. For instance, men often faint at the sight of their own blood, to which they are not accustomed. For this reason you should never stand behind one in the line at the Red Cross donor clinic.
Margaret Atwood
A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.
Margaret Atwood
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 Âessentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.
Margaret Atwood
Winning intoxicates you, and numbs you to the sufferings of others.
Margaret Atwood
Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I've found but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them.
Margaret Atwood
