Margaret Atwood Quotes

For many of us, we set out thinking there will be time in the future, and then suddenly we find ourselves at a moment when we have to acknowledge that the future isn't infinite.

As you get older, you think about things differently from when you do in your twenties, when you think you'll live forever.

When you're young, you think life is forever, but it's finite. I'm 68, so even by the maddest measurements, I'm in the last bit of life.

By the time you've reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

Things change when you get to 40. I'm embarrassed even that I'm going through it. In a very morbid way, at 40 you become aware of how long you've been on Earth and you start to question what you're going to use the remaining time doing.

I've always been somebody who's acutely aware of my mortality.

I do not really think about age. I am just sort of trying to get as much done before I get old and can't.

In your mid-20s, you think you'll go on for eternity. Then a point comes where you realise that's not going to be the case.

I think there's a big price to pay for consciousness, knowing that it's all going to end and we're mortal. I envy dogs. They don't know they're getting old! And they don't know it's towards the end. I mean, they never think, 'I used to get by on 16 hours of sleep a day. Now, if I don't get 19, I'm a wreck.'

I don't look ahead to the future as a vast, endless one. I've begun to feel the calendar pages turning.

The trouble is that you think you have time.

Age isn't important until you run out of it.

When you get older, you're running out of time. You care more about trying to stay on the planet a little longer, so you can learn how to draw better!

Do not act as if you had a thousand years to live.

Turning 50 gives me more yesterdays than tomorrows.

It's funny, don't you think, how time seems to do a lot of things? It flies, it tells, and worst of all, it runs out.

I work more now perhaps because I know that there is so little time left.

You can never know how your clock runs. But it does run - and always faster than you think.

This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.

The secret to a long life is knowin' when it's time to go.

This quality becomes important at a time when almost everyone is a poet. And as I said, we live in an age where almost everybody is a poet, but scarcely anyone can write a poem.

Anybody can die, everything is fleeting, and you've just got to make sure that you catch up on what you can catch up on.

In truth, how much time do any of us really have?

I've had a good run of birthdays, and now no one will notice when I die.

when you are old and realize that time is running out, you start imagining that you have the cure for all the ills of the world in your hand, and get frustrated because no one pays you any attention.