Margaret Atwood Quotes (276 Quotes)

A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

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

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it.

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.

He's very in depth, on the dark side. He's interested in structure and how things work. After reading his books you can't just be a tourist in those places, only seeing the sunny side.

The truly fearless think of themselves as normal.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you.

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

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

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.

I'm curious. If someone says 'Don't open that door', I'm right there

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

But if it's selfless
love you're looking for,
you've got the wrong goddess.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

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.

Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences to things you didn't even know you'd done.

Gardening is not a rational act.

Wall me up alive
in my own body.

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

It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups.

I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.

Canada was built on dead beavers.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.