Margaret Atwood

I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.

You quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves.

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

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

I'm a person of whim, and easily distracted. I don't like multitasking. When I'm doing one thing, I like to do just that thing.

There's a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That's what writers do when they're good.

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

Canada is a balloon-puncturing country. You are not really allowed to be an icon unless you also make an idiot of yourself.

The story as told in The Odyssey doesn't hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I'm a realist.

I don't think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It's essentially just a long narrative form. What you use that long narrative form for can be very different.