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Margaret Atwood

182 quotesNovelist · Born Nov 18, 1939 · Canadian · Female

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC OOnt FRSC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award several times, winning twice. In 2001, she was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. She is also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada's writing community. Among innumerable contributions to Canadian literature, she was a founding trustee of the Griffin Poetry Prize. Atwood is also the inventor, and developer, of the LongPen and associated technologies that facilitate the remote robotic writing of documents. She is the Co-Founder and a Director of Syngrafii Inc. (formerly Unotchit Inc.), a company that she started in 2004 to develop, produce and distribute the LongPen technology. She holds various patents related to the LongPen technologies. While she is best known for her work as a novelist, she has also published fifteen books of poetr

All Love (21)Life (14)Change (12)Stories (9)Pain (9)Desire (7)God (6)Confusion (5)Weakness (5)Truth (4)Poetry (4)strength (4)Freedom (4)Children (4)Perception (4)

From “The Handmaid's Tale”

I try not to think too much, like other things now, thought must be rationed.

Oppression Women Totalitarianism

You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave.

Behavior Feelings Emotion Psychology Mental Health

To want is to have a weakness.

Wanting Desire Weakness Lust

I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.

Wanting Desire Change Nostalgia

I am not your justification for existence.

Existence justification Love Idealism Idealizing Someone

Forgiveness is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.

forgiveness Power

What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed up against a wall, everything a huge foreground, of details, close-ups,…

Perspective Life Change

You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.

Jealousy Envy Insecurity

When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.

The Past Nostalgia Truth Perception Memory

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.

Freedom Stories People Life

But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

Pain Memory Remembering

Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

Igorance Ignoring

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

first lines of books

You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.

Jealousy Desire

From “Cat's Eye”

Forgiving men is so much easier than forgiving women.

forgiveness gender

This is what I miss… not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen.

Missing something Desire Impossibility

This is what I miss… not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen.

Imagining Daydreaming Sad Truth

Another belief of mine; that everyone my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

Belief Age

I see that there will be no end to imperfection, or to doing things the wrong way. Even if you grow up, no matter how hard you scrub, whatever you do, there will always be some other stain or spot on your face or stupid act, somebody frowning.

Imperfection Perfection Expectations

Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings. Then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines.

Love Exes Ex-Lovers

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