Quoted Quotables: The Wit & Wisdom of Margaret Atwood

---

"With a lyric poem, you look, and meditate, and put the rock back. 
With fiction you poke things with a stick to see what will happen."

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

"A ration of failures is bult into the process of writing.  The wastebasket has evolved for a reason."

"A word after a word after a word is power."

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

"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."

"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."

"Myths can't be translated as they did in their ancient soil.  We can only find out own meaning in our own time."

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

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

"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."

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

---