Quotes By Margaret Atwood

The threat to the planet is us. It's actually not a threat to the planet - it's a threat to us.

War is what happens when language fails.

If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I want there to be dragons inside the book. Proper labeling. Ethical labeling. I don't want to open up my cornflakes and find that they're full of pebbles... You need to respect the reader enough not to call it something it isn't.

Gardening is not a rational act.

Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences to things you didn't even know you'd done.

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

We shouldn't be saying 'Save the planet'; we should be saying: 'Save viable conditions in which people can live.' That's what we're dealing with here.

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.

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.

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

The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but 'Am I really that boring?'

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

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

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

All fat women look the same; they all look 42.

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

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.