Quotes from Margaret Atwood

I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.

I'm a strict, strict agnostic. It's very different from a casual, 'I don't know.' It's that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can't present it as fact.

Communications technology changes possibilities for communication, but that doesn't mean it changes the inherited structure of the brain. So you may think that you're addicted to online reading, but as soon as it isn't available anymore, your brain will pretty immediately adjust to other forms of reading. It's a habit like all habits.

The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but 'Am I really that boring?'

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist.

So that's what art is, for the artist," said Crake. "An empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.

There's nothing like drawing a thing to make you really see it.

The characters [of The Tempest] have always been favorites of mine. It is one of his meditations on art - what it does.

If I pick up a book with vampires on the cover, I want there to be vampires. If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I want there to be dragons inside the book. Proper labeling. Ethical labeling.

Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they focus on different areas of life on earth.

We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young.

I saw all of the films [based on The Tempest] available, including the one with Helen Mirren in which Prospero is Prospera - you wonder, "Would it work?" But it does, because anything she does works.

Publishers are in business to make money, and if your books do well they don't care if you are male, female, or an elephant.

Yelling is a form of publishing

We shouldn't be saying 'Save the planet'; we should be saying: 'Save viable conditions in which people can live.' That's what we're dealing with here.

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.

I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply a vehicle for private expression, but that it also exists for social examination. I firmly believe this.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance.

Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult whereas I am merely in disguise.

I'm from the generation that had the boys' door and the girls' door when you went to school, and you got in big trouble if you went in the wrong one.

You will always have partial points of view, and you'll always have the story behind the story that hasn't come out yet. And any form of journalism you're involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.