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
Extreme good, extreme evil: the abilities required are similar.
The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil
If you disagree with your government, that's political. If you disagree with your government that is approaching theocracy, then you're evil.
More powerful than God, more evil than the Devil; the poor have it, the rich lack it, and if you eat it you die?
Don't misunderstand me. I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and far more complicated. But sometimes it's hard to put up with.
Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.
In the desert there is no sign that says, Thou shalt not eat stones.
I think of this as a democratizing device.
People are now familiar with this kind of interaction. They may even have a more intimate moment that way.
When you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.
Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.
. . . time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee. . . . I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.
They've removed anything you can tie a rope to.
Once upon a time you could wander around one country, then the next and then maybe you'd go to England or wherever. Now they all want you to do it at the same time and you can't. It's just not physically possible.