quotes from classic

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn't write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

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

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

A reader can never tell if it's a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you're reading it, they're the same. It's a thimble. It's in the book.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can't, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you'd be a very strange person indeed.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

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.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

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.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

more quotes from 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.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

There's a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That's what writers do when they're good.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

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.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

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. I don't want to open up my cornflakes and find that they're full of pebbles... You need to respect the reader enough not to call it something it isn't.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

Canada is a balloon-puncturing country. You are not really allowed to be an icon unless you also make an idiot of yourself.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

I'm a person of whim, and easily distracted. I don't like multitasking. When I'm doing one thing, I like to do just that thing.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

Within one's own family, money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

Myths can't be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

When you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

I grew up in the golden age of Flash Gordon and sci-fi.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood