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" If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia. "

Margaret Atwood

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" If you're waiting for the perfect moment, you'll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There's nothing foolproof. "

Margaret Atwood

" Storytelling is a very old human skill that gives us an evolutionary advantage. If you can tell young people how you kill an emu, acted out in song or dance, or that Uncle George was eaten by a croc over there, don't go there to swim, then those young people don't have to find out by trial and error. "

Margaret Atwood

" We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. "

Margaret Atwood

" If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I want there to be dragons inside the book. Proper labeling. Ethical labeling. I don't want to open up my cornflakes and find that they're full of pebbles... You need to respect the reader enough not to call it something it isn't. "

Margaret Atwood

" This above all, to refuse to be a victim. "

Margaret Atwood

" Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what. "

Margaret Atwood

" An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness. "

Margaret Atwood

" As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist. "

Margaret Atwood

" If it's all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it's all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that's it. You're not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You're not going to read that book again. "

Margaret Atwood

" Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters. "

Margaret Atwood

" If you're put on a pedestal, you're supposed to behave yourself like a pedestal type of person. Pedestals actually have a limited circumference. Not much room to move around. "

Margaret Atwood

" Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don't fit in? "

Margaret Atwood

" Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome. "

Margaret Atwood

" In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. "

Margaret Atwood

" The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose. "

Margaret Atwood

" Vampires get the joy of flying around and living forever, werewolves get the joy of animal spirits. But zombies, they're not rich, or aristocratic, they shuffle around. They're a group phenomenon, they're not very fast, they're quite sickly. So what's the pleasure of being one? "

Margaret Atwood

" Social media is called social media for a reason. It lends itself to sharing rather than horn-tooting. "

Margaret Atwood

" I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me. "

Margaret Atwood

" I didn't go to school for a full year until I was 12. In the summer I was a wild child in the woods, with no shoes, and in the fall it was back to the city, shoe shops and school. "

Margaret Atwood

" '1984' is not a wonder tale. Not only could it happen, but it has happened, but under different names. "

Margaret Atwood

" Every aspect of human technology has a dark side, including the bow and arrow. "

Margaret Atwood

" Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we're probably not going to see. "

Margaret Atwood

" I hate to tell you this, but you will never actually go to a galaxy far, far away and encounter Darth Vader. That's science fiction; it isn't going to happen. "

Margaret Atwood

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

Margaret Atwood