Top 500 Margaret Atwood Quotes (2023 Update)
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101. “Fear has a smell, as love does.”

— Margaret Atwood

102. “For if the world treats you well, Sir, you come to believe you are deserving of it.”

— Margaret Atwood

103. “To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self.”

— Margaret Atwood

104. “Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.”

— Margaret Atwood

105. “If you’re put on a pedestal, you’re supposed to behave yourself like a pedestal type of person. Pedestals actually have a limited circumference. Not much room to move around.”

— Margaret Atwood

106. “You don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.”

— Margaret Atwood

107. “Oppression involves a failure of the imagination: the failure to imagine the full humanity of other human beings.”

— Margaret Atwood

108. “The use of “religion” as an excuse to repress the freedom of expression and to deny human rights is not confined to any country or time.”

— Margaret Atwood

109. “I myself have 12 hats, and each one represents a different personality. Why just be yourself?”

— Margaret Atwood

110. “When we’re young, we like happy endings. When we’re a little older, we think happy endings are unrealistic and so we prefer bad but credible endings. When we’re older still, we realize happy endings aren’t so bad after all.”

— Margaret Atwood

111. “I grew up in the north woods of Canada. You had to know certain things about survival. Wilderness survival courses weren’t very formalized when I was growing up, but I was taught certain things about what to do if I got lost in the woods.”

— Margaret Atwood

112. “If your not annoying somebody, you’re not alive.”

— Margaret Atwood

113. “There’s always something to occupy the inquiring mind.”

— Margaret Atwood

114. “My good intentions are completely lethal.”

— Margaret Atwood

115. “Never pray for justice, because you might get some.”

— Margaret Atwood

116. “We understand more than we know.”

— Margaret Atwood

117. “When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.”

— Margaret Atwood

118. “A hot wind was blowing around my head, the strands of my hair lifting and swirling in it, like ink spilled in water.”

— Margaret Atwood

119. “The fabric of democracy is always fragile everywhere because it depends on the will of citizens to protect it, and when they become scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend it, it can go very quickly.”

— Margaret Atwood

120. “And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.”

— Margaret Atwood

121. “Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”

— Margaret Atwood

122. “No matter how much you’ve been warned, Death always comes without knocking. Why now? is the cry. Why so soon? It’s the cry of a child being called home at dusk.”

— Margaret Atwood

123. “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

124. “Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.”

— Margaret Atwood

125. “The facts of this world seen clearly are seen through tears.”

— Margaret Atwood

126. “Come away with me, he said, we will live on a desert island. I said, I am a desert island. It was not what he had in mind.”

— Margaret Atwood

127. “In my dreams of this city I am always lost.”

— Margaret Atwood

128. “Fool, he tells himself. She’s not here. She was never here. It was imagination and wishful thinking, nothing but that. Resign yourself. He can’t resign himself.”

— Margaret Atwood

129. “But nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency.”

— Margaret Atwood

130. “Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.”

— Margaret Atwood

131. “Toast is me. I am toast.”

— Margaret Atwood

132. “There’s something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you’re still alive.”

— Margaret Atwood

133. “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.”

— Margaret Atwood

134. “We’ve learned to see the world in gasps.”

— Margaret Atwood

135. “Men and women are not “equal” if “equal” means “exactly the same.” Our many puzzlements and indeed unhappinesses come from trying to figure out what the differences really mean, or should mean, or should not mean.”

— Margaret Atwood

136. “Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who’ll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings. To me it’s the latter, so I sign up.”

— Margaret Atwood

137. “A fist is more than the sum of its fingers.”

— Margaret Atwood

138. “How shrunk, how dwindled, in our times Creation’s mighty seed – For Man has broke the Fellowship With murder, lust, and greed.”

— Margaret Atwood

139. “Where do the words go when we have said them?”

— Margaret Atwood

140. “This above all, to refuse to be a victim.”

— Margaret Atwood

141. “Where do you draw the line, between love and greed? We never did know, we always wanted more. We want to take it all in, for one last time, we want to eat the world with our eyes.”

— Margaret Atwood

142. “Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?”

— Margaret Atwood

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

— Margaret Atwood

144. “There may not be one Truth – there may be several truths – but saying that is not to say that reality doesn’t exist.”

— Margaret Atwood

145. “Science is a tool, and we invent tools to do things we want. It’s a question of how those tools are used by people.”

— Margaret Atwood

146. “I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.”

— Margaret Atwood

147. “I wish you good writing and good luck. Even if you’ve already done the good writing, you’ll still need the good luck. It’s a shark-filled lagoon out there. Cross your fingers and watch your back.”

— Margaret Atwood

148. “No one knows what cuases an outer landscape to become an inner one.”

— Margaret Atwood

149. “Things musicals taught me: All your problems will go away if you sing about it.”

— Margaret Atwood

150. “I feel like cotton candy: sugar and air. Squeeze me and I’d turn into a small sickly damp wad of weeping pinky-red.”

— Margaret Atwood