“Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like paté.” -Margaret Atwood, novelist and poet
“In the end, we all become stories.”
“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”
“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”
“The darkness is really out there. It’s not something that’s in my head, just. It’s in my work because it’s in the world.”
“Time is not a thing that passes…it’s a sea on which you float.”
“God gave unto the
Animals A wisdom past our power to see:
Each knows innately how to live,
Which we must learn laboriously.”
Survival is a theme that weighs heavily on Atwood, and it’s in a lot of her work. And she counts the creation of alternate realities and fiction writing as survival tactics.
