All MARGARET ATWOOD Quotes about “Books”

“I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.”
“The society in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under Perry Miller, to whom the book is dedicated.”
“You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but Âessentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.”
“Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?”
“I never have [suffered writerâ€™s block], although Iâ€™ve had books that didnâ€™t work out. I had to stop writing them. I just abandoned them. It was depressing, but it wasnâ€™t the end of the world. When it really isnâ€™t working, and youâ€™ve been bashing yourself against the wall, itâ€™s kind of a relief. I mean, sometimes you bash yourself against the wall and you get through it. But sometimes the wall is just a wall. Thereâ€™s nothing to be done but go somewhere else.”
“You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a Âromantic relationship, unless you want to break up.”
“Show me a character totally without anxieties and I will show you a boring book.”
“Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.”
“Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it.”
“I have been known to buy e-versions of my books because I was in a hotel room and I needed one right away to look up something in it; very handy for that - you can have it just the next minute; you can press the button and just have it.”
“Some cleric putting a match to her. /Neither of them looks happy about it. /Once lit, she'll burn like a book, /like a book that was ever finished, /like a locked-up library.”
“I think the book you always like best is the one you're about to write.”
“I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.”
“Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Second, they think somebody's going to publish it. Third, they think somebody's going to read it. Fourth, they think somebody's going to like it. How optimistic is that?”
“Perhaps they were looking for passion; perhaps they delved into this book as into a mysterious parcel - a gift box at the bottom of which, hidden in layers of rustling tissue paper, lay something they'd always longed for but couldn't ever grasp.”
“We all know that a book is not really a person. It isnâ€™t a human being. But if you are a lover of books as books â€“ as objects, that is â€“ and ignore the human element in them â€“ that is, their voices â€“ you will be committing an error of the soul, because you will be an idolator, or else a fetishist.”
“I have a big following among the biogeeks of this world. Nobody ever puts them in books.”
“If it's all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it's all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that's it. You're not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You're not going to read that book again.”
“Reading ... changes you. You aren't the same person after you've read a particular book as you were before, and you will read the next book, unless both are Harlequin Romances, in a slightly different way.”
“Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea.”
“It was exciting to work with director Jennifer Baichwal, who made Manufactured Landscapes and others, on the film of Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. It's called, simply, PAYBACK. Jennifer didn't want to do a transliteration of the book, a kind of illustrated version, but to go into the core of the book: owing and being owed, paying and paying back, on all sorts of levels. So she found real-life, visceral stories that embodied the themes of the book.”
“If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can't, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you'd be a very strange person indeed.”
“Publishers are in business to make money, and if your books do well they don't care if you are male, female, or an elephant.”
“I myself discovered many authors through school reading lists and through school anthologies. The positives are: young readers can find the world opening up to them through books they study. The negatives may include bad experiences kids have - if they don't like the book or the teacher, or the way the book is taught.”

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