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.

For the children with their greedy little mouths represent the future, which like time itself will devour all now alive.

We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we're so dependent on oil, not just for fuel but also plastic. If plastic vanished, there would be total chaos. We have to think quite carefully about using oil and its derivatives, because it's not going to be around forever.

I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart.

How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.

If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.

You quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves.

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

You can't keep a cool head when you're drowning in love. You just trash around a lot and scream, and wear yourself out.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

The Eskimo has fifty-names for snow because it is important to them there ought to be as many for love.

Sons branch out, but one woman leads to another.