Margaret Atwood
He stops, looks up at this window, and I can see the white oblong of his face. We look at each other. I have no rose to toss, he has no lute. But it's the same kind of hunger.Collection: White
I stand on the corner, pretending I am a tree.Collection: Tree
Moira was like an elevator with open sides. She made us dizzy.Collection: Dizzy
You're sad because you're sad. It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical. Go see a shrink or take a pill, or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll you need to sleep. Well, all children are sad but some get over it. Count your blessings. Better than that, buy a hat. Buy a coat or a pet. Take up dancing to forget.Collection: Children
Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been.Collection: Dream
Why do men feel threatened by women?Collection: Men
When they came to harvest my corpse (open your mouth, close your eyes) cut my body from the rope, surprise, surprise: I was still alive. Tough luck, folks, I know the law: you can't execute me twice for the same thing. How nice. I fell to the clover, breathed it in, and bared my teeth at them in a filthy grin. You can imagine how that went over. Now I only need to look out at them through my sky-blue eyes. They see their own ill will staring then in the forehead and turn tail Before, I was not a witch. But now I am one.Collection: Nice
Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.Collection: Fate
The road to death is a lonely highway, and longer than it apears, even when it leads straight down from the scaffold, by way of a rope; and it’s a dark road, with never any moon shining on it, to light your way.Collection: Lonely
It doesn’t really matter what “genre” your book is. What matters is that it’s a good book of its kind. Whatever that kind may be.Collection: Book
The use of “religion” as an excuse to repress the freedom of expression and to deny human rights is not confined to any country or time.Collection: Country
By telling you anything at all I’m at least believing in you, believe you’re there, I believe you into being. Because I’m telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are. So I will go on. So I will myself to go on.Collection: Stories
I’ll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I’ll make you me.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Stories
As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.Collection: Firsts
I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television – there wasn’t a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.Collection: Reading
A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book.Collection: Book
Publishers are in business to make money, and if your books do well they don’t care if you are male, female, or an elephant.Collection: Book
Stick a shovel into the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light. Good for trade, we thrive on bones; without them there’d be no stories.Collection: Stories