Margaret Atwood

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.

You can never see yourself the way you are to someone else - to a man looking at you, from behind, when you don't know - because in a mirror your own head is always cranked around over your shoulder. A coy, inviting pose. You can hold up another mirror to see the back view, but then what you see is what so many painters have loved to paint - Woman Looking In Mirror, said to be an allegory of vanity. Though it is unlikely to be vanity, but the reverse: a search for flaws. What is it about me? can so easily be construed as What is wrong with me?

Writing is work. It__ also gambling. You don__ get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you__e on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don__ whine.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided by one.

Being here with him is safety; it's a cave, where we huddle together while the storm goes on outside. This is a delusion, of course. This room is one of the most dangerous places I could be.

The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them there ought to be as many for love.

A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness.

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

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

For years I wanted to be older and now I am.

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

Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

Good writing takes place at intersections, at what you might call knots, at places where the society is snarled or knotted up.

Sons branch out but one woman leads to another.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it but there's less of you.

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.