"Writers are much better behaved nowadays, for a couple of reasons. Once upon a time nobody was thinking of a career, unless you lived in New York, so ...
A word after a word after a word is power.
More Margaret Atwood quotes
"Good writing takes place at intersections, at what you might call knots, at places where the society is snarled or knotted up.
"The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.
"Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.
"If writing novels - and reading them - have any redeeming social value, it's probably that they force you to imagine what it's like to be somebody els...
"For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.… I think it’s very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there an...
"Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are r...
"Communications technology changes possibilities for communication, but that doesn't mean it changes the inherited structure of the brain. So you may t...
"I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.
"All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.All of them?Sure, he says. Think about it. There's esc...
"When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of fr...
"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 ...
"Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out...
"I wasn't discriminating in my reading, and I'm still not. I read then primarily to be entertained, as I do now. And I'm not saying that apologetically...
"Perhaps they were looking for passion; perhaps they delved into this book as into a mysterious parcel - a gift box at the bottom of which, hidden in l...