A writer's wisdom-Margaret Atwood

The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.



The story as told in The Odyssey doesn't hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.



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.




This above all, to refuse to be a victim.



War is what happens when language fails.



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



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



You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.



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




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



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



A word after a word after a word is power.



An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.



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



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




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



Gardening is not a rational act.



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.


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



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.



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


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.




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



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