Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC OOnt FRSCis 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...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth18 November 1939
CityOttawa, Canada
CountryCanada
It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography — but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off.
There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.
I used to act in college, but always comedy. Didn't do [William] Shakespeare - did Ben Jonson.
You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.
But the adjectives change,” said Jimmy. “Nothing’s worse than last year’s adjectives.
Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
The idea of the chickens with the multiple breasts and thighs came from an urban legend that some fast-food places had developed chickens with four thighs. It wasn't true, but it is a suggestive rumor.
How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.
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.
Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.
Writing is alone, but I don't think it's lonely. Ask any writer if they feel lonely when they're writing their book, and I think they'll say no.
It's rather useless to write a gripping narrative with nothing in it but climate change because novels are always about people even if they purport to be about rabbits or robots.
Science is not something that exists apart from human beings. It's one of the things we do as human beings, and we always have done science and technology in some form.
My brother and I were both teenage writers, and he was, I have to say, better than I was, but he went into science, and I went into writing.