Margaret Atwood Quotes

It's fun because you can escape and learn about what other people's minds have created. It inspires you to think maybe you could come up with a creature yourself. I like that.

Wonder is very important, because if we never wondered, we would never get to the point of asking questions. Yet wonder may lead people to write poetry or to paint pictures or to pray, as well as to ask the kinds of questions about the world and themselves that can be answered by science.

Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others.

I've been a traveller, but I don't travel so much now. I'm trying to do it vicariously through my writing. I'm trying to write books that will draw readers away from their lives but send them back in a more awakened way.

I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.

I write because I have always been curious about what it would feel like to be someone else, in a different situation. Fiction is a wonderful way of exploring that.

I'm curious about other people. That's the essence of my acting. I'm interested in what it would be like to be you.

I don't have any office; I can write everywhere. So, I put a piece of paper on the table, and then I travel. Literally, writing for me is like travelling. It's getting out of myself and living another life - maybe a better life.

I'm constantly surprised by human nature and humanity. And I think that's why I love what I do: because I love to story-tell and bring new characters to life.

Writing isn't necessarily about what one knows but what one wants to know.

Literature allows us to be open, to listen, and to be curious.

I read for the sensation of becoming another person; I write for the same sensation.

We all have a lot of people inside us, yet we get to live only one life. Fiction lets us slip into someone else’s skin, so to speak. That’s why we read novels, and also why we write them - to experience more life, through imagination.

I think there are two sides of the coin. On one hand, it can be challenging to access different parts of yourself, and you kind of have to put yourself back into reality when you're done with the job. But I think it's also really cool to have the ability to try on being different people and to explore some parts of yourself because you get to know yourself better. You get to know parts of yourself that you haven't met before. I think that's something that I've been learning more recently.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.

The appeal of writing is primarily the investigation of mystery.

One of the reasons I write is I like being surprised

As a young kid I assumed that everybody was sort of on the same wavelength as I was and then I found out in a lot of small ways that that wasn't the case. It's sort of a mixed blessing. My mind is like a puppy. It goes all over. I guess writing fiction was a way of harnessing that. I could hook a puppy up to a treadmill and get something out of it.

I think a diversity of expression can only be good, so I think the more that people write about their experience, use their imagination to deal with their experience, you know, I think that's going to be good for not only for those authors but also for people who are interested in trying to understand it.

Writing is the crack through which you can crawl into a bigger world, into your wild mind.

Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive.

What's so exciting and terrifying about the writing process is that it really is an act of exploration and discovery. With all of us, not just writers, there is a sort of knowledge of the other. We have a lot more in common than we realize, and I think writing is really a sustained act of empathy.

I'm inspired by everything, really. I'm inspired by locations and travel, I'm inspired by art and music, I'm inspired by people. When my curiosity peaks and I want to know everything about the subject, I want to know how I can get more deeply involved.

I think the greatest thing about being an actor is that you can become other people. ... You have the opportunity to explore ... alternative ways of living for a brief time.

Write. Write every day. Write honestly. Write something that doesn’t exist, and you wish did. Read. Learn. Study. Watch people. Listen to what they say, listen to how they say it and listen to what they do not say. Surprise yourself. Scare yourself.