Quotes from Margaret Atwood

Sons branch out, but one woman leads to another.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, my father used to say; it bothered me, I didn't see why they would want to skin a cat even one way.

I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it.

Make the verses flow together. If a following verse has nothing to do with the previous, you may lose our listener/reader. You want a smooth flow to hear or read, and it's easier to memorize.

Science is a tool, and we invent tools to do things we want. It's a question of how those tools are used by people.

Despite their cool poses they wear their cravings on the outside, like the suckers on a squid. They want it all.

Science never makes things that do not have to do with what we feel, by which I mean what we want and what we fear.

It's probably a form of childish curiosity that keeps me going as a fiction writer. I ... want to open everybody's bureau drawers and see what they keep in there. I'm nosy.

It's his word against the Commander's, unless he wants to head a posse. Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words.

Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.

I was delighted with the film [Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth]; it almost made me want to be a film-maker!

War is what happens when language fails.

Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.

The answers you get from literature depend upon the questions you pose.

A word after a word after a word is power.

If you're put on a pedestal, you're supposed to behave yourself like a pedestal type of person. Pedestals actually have a limited circumference. Not much room to move around.

Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win.

Disease has always been a much bigger killer of human beings than wars.

My parents were gardeners themselves, and perforce they used environmental techniques because it was during the war, and you didn't have the new sorts of chemicals.

Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.

It wasn't so easy though, ending the war. A war is a huge fire; the ashes from it drift far, and settle slowly.

Surviving Is the only warWe can afford

Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we're probably not going to see.

Love is giving, marriage is buying and selling. You can't put love into a contract.