1,705 Quotes by Margaret Atwood

That is how we writers all started: by reading. We heard the voice of a book speaking to us.

I felt confused, and also inadequate; whatever he was asking or demanding, it was beyond me. this was the first time a man would expect more from me than i was capable of giving, but it wouldn't be the last.

If you were a songWhat song would you be?Would you be the voice that sings, Would you be the music?When I am singing this song for youYou are not empty airYou are here,One breath and then another:You are here with me...

That's who is waiting for me:an invisible mandefined by a dotted line: the shape of an absencein your place at the table, sitting across from me, eating toast and eggs as usualor walking ahead up the drive, a rustling of the fallen leaves, a slight thickening of the air. It's you in the future, we both know that. You'll be here but not here, a muscle memory, like hanging a haton a hook that's not there any longer.

You don't believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one most travelled by. It was littered with corpses, as such roads are. But as you will have noticed, my own corpse is not among them.

Nobody is any authority of the fucks other people give.

No wires tender even as nervescan transmit the impact ofour seasons, our catastropheswhile we are closed inside them

No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do too badly by one another, we did as well as most.