Quotes from Margaret Atwood

It's literature. It's all books. There are good books and bad books. Literary fiction can be bad, and so can sci-fi. Sci-fi can be wonderful and so can literary fiction. As long as it's a good book, who cares? Hold my attention; that's all I ask. Make me believe.

Poems are made of words. They aren't boxes. They aren't houses. Nobody is in them, really.

Life, life, you sang with every cell, compelled into dancing as the spell held you enchained and you burned air.

She was keeping it in a cedar box with some other penises she'd stolen; she was feeding them on grains of wheat. That's the usual method of tending penises.

He loved her so much when he made her unhappy, or else when she made him unhappy: at these moments he scarcely knew which was which.

But what if she discovers the truth? What he suspects is the truth. That he's patchwork, a tin man, his heart stuffed with sawdust. He thinks of her waiting for him, somewhere else, an island, subtropical, not muggy, her long hair waving in the sea breeze, a red hibiscus tucked behind one ear. If he's lucky she'll wait till that happens, till he can get there to be with her.

Nothing is ever settled," says Jocelyn. "Every day is different. Isn't it better to do something because you've decided to? Rather than because you have to?" "No, it isn't," says Charmaine. "Love isn't like that. With love, you can't stop yourself." She wants the helplessness, she wants…

Returning from the dead used to be something I did well I began asking why I began forgetting how

What would that be like - to long, to yearn for someone who is right there before your eyes, day in and day out?

What were prizes but one more level of control imposed on Art by the establishment?

The older women, the married ones and the widows, wear black clothes and no makeup, as I used to do. When I was in the later months of pregnancy, they would smile at me, as if I was almost one of them. Now they smile at Sarah first.

Once they tried to save something, others or their own souls.