Survival Quotes

“What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. Literature is not only a mirror; it is also a map, a geography of the mind. Our literature is one such map, if we can learn to read it as our literature, as the product of who and where we have been. We need such a map desperately, we need to know about here, because here is where we live. For the members of a country or a culture, shared knowledge of their place, their here, is not a luxury but a necessity. Without that knowledge we will not survive.”
― Margaret Atwood, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature

“...the values ascribed to the Indian will depend on what the white writer feels about Nature, and America has always had mixed feelings about that. At one end of the spectrum is Thoreau, wishing to immerse himself in swamps for the positive vibrations; at the other end is Benjamin Franklin, who didn't like Nature. [p.91]”
― Margaret Atwood, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature

“Canlit might not exert the fascination of - say - a venereal wart.”
― Margaret Atwood, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature

“The question, then, is not whether boy should meet girl in Winnipeg or in New York; instead it is, What happens in Canadian literature when boy meets girl? And what sort of boy, and what sort of girl? If you've got this far, you may predict that when boy meets girl she gets cancer and he gets hit by a meteorite. . . .”
― Margaret Atwood, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature

“I wasn't discriminating in my reading, and I'm still not. I read then primarily to be entertained, as I do now. And I'm not saying that apologetically: I feel that if you remove the initial gut response from reading — the delight or excitement or simply the enjoyment of being told a story — and try to concentrate on the meaning or the shape of the "message" first, you might as well give up, it's too much like all work and no play.”
― Margaret Atwood , Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature