Margaret Atwood Quotes
After I wrote Handmaid’s Tale, people came up to me and asked why weren’t there any protests. And I said, 'You don’t understand totalitarianism.' A real totalitarianism doesn’t fool around with protests in the streets.
Quotes to Explore
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William Lloyd Garrison was up there with Frederick Douglass being thrown off trains and going through what happened in the 1960s in 1840 in Boston.
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I love films that show people in a way that's so real it's almost unsettling, and that's what really inspires me because I write about people. I write about people that I know, so I want to portray them and portray myself in a way that is unapologetic.
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I think that any time you're able to get a guy like Carmelo Anthony to be on your team, you're going to be a step up.
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Education is a way of empowering people; it opens up so many doors and is fundamental to everybody. And teachers are not often appreciated in the way that they should be.
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I'm 21 years old, and it's kind of uncomfortable for me to talk about, but I'm in the 1 percent as far as my income and tax bracket. But now that I'm here, there's no amount of money you can wave in front of my face that will make me understand depriving people of human rights.
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There's very few people - like Shakespeare - who, no matter what, were gonna do what they did. For the rest of us, there's a lot of events that have to happen in order for things to end up the way they are.
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Americans are people who prefer the Continent to their own country, but refuse to learn its languages.
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I don't just want to be a cute girl in a comedy or the actress who just does the same thing over and over again. I want to play roles that are distinct. I want to have a more varied career like actresses Viola Davis or Angela Bassett - those are the people that I grew up watching and admiring.
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Wayne and Drake, it takes them so long to do a song. I understand why, because they want it to be perfect. But I think I can do a perfect song in 10 minutes.
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I'll never retire. I'm just using up somebody else's oxygen if I retire.
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People who run a ready-to-wear company are businessmen rather than production or design people.
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I was in Toronto when the big Women's March was going on, and I thought, 'Well, I've never been to a protest, and I can't sit this one out, and they're having a gathering here in Toronto, so I may as well go,' and gosh, I didn't expect 60,000 or 65,000 people to be there - it was huge! It was something that I didn't feel I could sit out at all.
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We have morons representing us. People who go up and vote for a bill that they have never read - I mean, are we crazy? Are we insane to hand over our government to those kinds of people?
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Fifty-nine cents. For years, I wore a button - '59 cents.' Many of my colleagues wore it also. The purpose was so that people would come up and ask, 'What does '59 cents' mean?' One could then launch into a discussion about how women working full time in the U.S. earn 59 cents for every dollar earned by men.
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I gave up writing children's books. I wanted to escape from them as I had once wanted to escape from 'Punch': as I have always wanted to escape. In vain.
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Storytelling is fine as long as you can encourage people to act on the stories.
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I took group lessons at a rink near my home. We first had to learn how to stand up on the ice wearing skates. Eventually we learned to move forward, but soon found out that it was not that easy to stop! So that was our next important lesson.
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The world's greatest city - New York City - deserves a government that works for all New Yorkers. That starts with a mayor who is independent from party bosses and special interests, who isn't afraid to be honest with the people, and who is focused on the issues New Yorkers care about most.
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We should have a path to legal status for the 12 million people that are here illegally. It means, come out from the shadows, pay a fine, earn legal status by working, by paying taxes, learning English. Not committing crimes and earn legal status where you're not cutting in front of the line for people that are patiently waiting outside.
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Take a straw and throw it up into the air — you may see by that which way the wind is.
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Turning to God, Truth, Reality, simply means to let go, even fearfully at first, of our self-centered ideas.
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Vulgar and common persons, as they carry nothing out of this world, so they leave nothing in it: they receive no eminency in their birth, they acquire none in their life, they have none when they die, they leave none at their death.
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After I wrote Handmaid’s Tale, people came up to me and asked why weren’t there any protests. And I said, 'You don’t understand totalitarianism.' A real totalitarianism doesn’t fool around with protests in the streets.
