“Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing is in any case forbidden. But if it’s a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don’t tell a story only to yourself. There’s always someone else.
Even when there is no one.”

Source: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Chapter 7 (pp. 39-40)
Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing is in any case forbidden. But if it’s a story…" by Margaret Atwood?
Margaret Atwood photo
Margaret Atwood 348
Canadian writer 1939

Related quotes

Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Edwidge Danticat photo
Stephen King photo

“When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Variant: When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

James Patterson photo
Jeanette Winterson photo
Ray Bradbury photo

“I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

The Paris Review interview (2010)
Context: New Yorkers love to dupe themselves, as well as doom themselves. I haven’t had to live like that. I’m a California boy. I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.

“No, I never plan my stories. A detailed outline is enough for me to lose interest in the whole thing. Even a brief oral summary makes the desire to write what I have in mind vanish. I am one of those who begin to write knowing only a few essential features of the story they intend to tell. The rest they discover line by line.”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

On not planning her stories in advance in “In a rare interview, Elena Ferrante describes the writing process behind the Neapolitan novels” https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-elena-ferrante-interview-20180517-htmlstory.html in Los Angeles Times (2018 May 17)

Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo
Bill Moyers photo
James Patterson photo

Related topics