The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.
Interpretation
Not everyone has engaged with classic or great literature, despite the common belief that many have.
Margaret Atwood's quote highlights the misconception that a large number of people have read and appreciated classic literature. This suggests that while some works are considered great, the reality is that many individuals may not have had the opportunity or interest to engage with such texts, reflecting wider truths about access to literature and culture.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of reading, one might refer to Atwood's quote to emphasize that not everyone has read the classics.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances.
Writers are often the worst judges of what they have written.
People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.
There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.
The power of literature does not lie in resonance with the particular but the way that the particular speaks to a broader, more universal truth.
People ask me why I write strong women, and I say, 'Well, I don't like stupid ones.' Who would want to read about weak and whiny women? Are they people who assume women are weak and whiny? If so, why do they think that?
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.