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

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.
Margaret Atwood

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

A word after a word after a word is power.
Margaret Atwood

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.
Margaret Atwood

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

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

Canada was built on dead beavers.
Margaret Atwood

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

Gardening is not a rational act.
Margaret Atwood


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.
Margaret Atwood

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

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.
Margaret Atwood

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

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

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.
Margaret Atwood

Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.
Margaret Atwood

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

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