Quotes By Margaret Atwood

I'm the only person you've ever met who has read Longfellow.

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 older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

I'm bad at picking heroes.

I got into trouble a while ago for saying that I thought the internet led to increased literacy - people scolded me about the shocking grammar to be found online - but I was talking about fundamentals: quite simply, you can't use the net unless you can read.

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

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.

War is what happens when language fails.

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

Gardening is not a rational act.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

Canada was built on dead beavers.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

I tend to feel if people say they're going to do something, they will, if given the chance.

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.

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

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.

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

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