Margaret Atwood Quotes

History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth.

There is no one truth. There’s only what happened, based on how you perceive it.

There may always be another reality to make fiction of the truth we think we've arrived at.

Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place - and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all - so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.

It seemed to me, in some way, especially when you're looking back at distant historical events, the "Truth" with a capital "T" is kind of the juxtaposition of all the many, many, many truths that seem true to people at the time.

It depends on which reality you take and which reality I take.” (p. 318).

History must always be taken with a grain of salt. It is, after all, not a science but an art.

If this book has made any point clear, I hope it's that things don't have to be real to be true. Or vice versa.

There is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like to the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you.

It's funny how humans can wrap their mind around things and fit them into their version of reality.

We're all subjective beings and trapped in our own realities and our own biographical stories and physical bodies and our histories - and that's the only way we can experience the world.

The case against the notion of historical objectivity is like the case against international law, or international morality; that it does not exist.

For me, it's always difficult when a historical film claims to depict or represent a reality that none of us can know, that is always different. It's always the case. We never know what happened then.

I don't pretend reality is the same for everyone.

There is always a divergence between our perception and what actually exists.

You have to use fantasy to show different sides to reality. That's how it can bend.

Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.

Reality is negotiable.

There is nothing that isn't true if you believe it; and nothing is true, believe it or not.

After all, across the population there are slight differences in brain function, and sometimes these translate directly into different ways of experiencing the world. And each individual believes his way is reality.

You know the movie "Rashomon" from [Takeshi] Kurosawa, when all the people in the forest see something different? Each performance was like that.

It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.

Reality is inside the skull.

The truth is always multiplex.