Margaret Atwood Quotes

I started a writing class, not in service of writing a script or writing anything specific. I've just really been enjoying that, and oddly the group, not by design, but it just happened to be all women, and there were three women who gave birth this fall while we were all in class, and there's just something really great about getting to know these women through their stories and what they're writing about.

I was writing very early, like I was involved in our high school literary magazine, which was called 'Pariah.' The football team was the Bears, and the literary magazine was 'Pariah.' It was great. It was definitely a real sub-culture. But I wrote stories for them.

We get so many people saying short fiction is not economical, that it doesn't sell; but there are so many of us enjoying writing it and reading it. So it's wonderful to be around people who love short fiction too - it's like hanging around with my tribe.

I never thought I'd be a person who would want to write books...I promise you not a single English teacher I've ever had would have thought that this would be going on right now.

I was getting rewarded for writing well, from about the age of five or six. A teacher would say, "Look what Andrew has written," and I thought, "Maybe I could be a writer."

Seize every opportunity you have to learn. Keep your eyes and ears wide open and seize life — don't let the moments slip through your fingers like a fistful of sand. Be your own teacher. Let life write your textbook.

I never imagined I'd write a book.

Be your own teacher. Let life write your textbook.

You become a writer on a television show, and you see yourself doing bigger and better things, you don't wait till they tell you, "Here's the way to do bigger and better things," you start writing. You start writing that material that you might be doing off to the side. Nobody's going to be paying you for that, but it could turn into something big.

In school, writing was the only thing that really came naturally to me, but it wasn't until college that I realized that I could do it for more than just fun.

Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life.

And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.

... to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers.

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.

One nice thing about putting the thing away for a couple of months before looking at it is that you start appreciate your own wit. Of course, this can be carried too far. But it's kind of cool when you crack up a piece of writing, and then realize you wrote it. I recommend this feeling.

however many resolutions one makes, one's pen, like water, always finds its own level, and one can't write in any way other than one's own.

You must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.

We stayed at home to write, to consolidate our outstretched selves.

I have this theory that anything that happens to you that leaves you alive and intact can be used somewhere in your writing.

As my kid gets a little bit older, if I feel like I have a little bit more time on my hands, I'd like to get more into developing ideas and writing things.

A writer is essentially a man who does not resign himself to loneliness.

Once I started writing all the time and interacting with poets, I made a conscious decision to identify myself as a poet. It's funny how much a single word can provide focus and direction. As soon as I claimed that identity, I started clearing more and more space for poetry in my life and applying poetic tools to other areas of my life. The world became a different place, and I witnessed it through different kinds of eyes.

Some things lend themselves well to songs, some things don't, and I'm learning that a lot at the moment. It's still a relatively new way of writing. It's only really the last five to 10 years that I've taken my writing seriously in this way, as something I can keep working toward. I think I feel myself much more before as simply a songwriter.

I'm trying to write for people my age. And my inspiration over the years has changed dramatically.

To be the kind of writer you want to be, you must first be the kind of thinker you want to be.