Quotes About Margaret Atwood

Like many modern poets, I tend to conceal rhymes by placing them in the middle of lines, and to avoid immediate alliteration and assonance in favor of echoes placed later in the poems.

My books are often shelved around those of Chinua Achebe and Margaret Atwood, or Chimamanda Adichie and Monica Ali. All of this depends, of course, on the bookstore and how conversant the shelf stocker is with the alphabet.

The society in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under Perry Miller, to whom the book is dedicated.

Should is a futile word. It's about what didn't happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It belongs in another dimension of space.

Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered.

I am tempted to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great compliment to a woman.

But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men.

It's a lifelong failing: she has never been prepared. But how can you have a sense of wonder if you're prepared for everything? Prepared for the sunset. Prepared for the moonrise. Prepared for the ice storm. What a flat existence that would be.

Craziness was considered funny, like all other things that were in reality frightening and profoundly shameful.

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.

In the desert there is no sign that says, Thou shalt not eat stones. — Sufi proverb

I don't even close my eyes. Out there or inside my head, it's an equal darkness. Or light.

Being socially retarded is like being mentally retarded, it arouses in others disgust and pity and the desire to torment and reform.

A writer's age at the time of a work's composition is never irrelevant.

I guess you get all my money, I said. And I'm not even dead. I was trying for a joke, but it came out sounding macabre. Hush, he said. He was still kneeling on the floor. You know I'll always take care of you. I thought, already he's starting to patronize me. Then I thought, already you're starting to get paranoid.

I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight. Where I am is not a prison but a privilege...

It was true, I took too much for granted; I trusted fate, back then.

All myths are stories, but not all stories are myths: among stories, myths hold a special place.

It was Crake preserving his dignity, because the alternative would have been losing it.

According to Tobias, it was more difficult to seduce a stupid woman than an intelligent one because stupid women could not understand innuendo or even connect cause with effect.

I grew sodden with light; my skin on the inside glowed a dull red.

And I said that Crozier did not need to call Fuck right now because we were not in trouble and did not need his help. And Toby said, That's right, he doesn't like to be summoned on trivial matters. And Zeb coughed.

It's kind of shocking to hear Toby called a babe; sort of like calling God a studmuffin.

And what did I amount to, once the official version gained ground? An edifying legend. A stick used to beat other women with.