All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. ...Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the fundamental nature of stories, suggesting they revolve around conflict and survival symbolized by 'wolves'. Atwood implies that the core struggles in life are universally relatable.
Margaret Atwood's quote emphasizes that all significant narratives boil down to the metaphor of 'wolves', which represent the challenges, adversities, and conflicts we face in life. Whether it's about escaping danger, confronting struggles, or rising to leadership, these motifs resonate across countless tales, suggesting that true stories capture our primal instincts and social dynamics, where survival often comes at a personal cost. To Atwood, tales that do not engage with these wolf-like struggles lack substance and depth, underscoring the necessity of confronting real issues for narratives to have meaning.
In practice
During a discussion about resilience in literature, one might say, 'As Margaret Atwood suggests, all stories are about wolves, emphasizing the importance of facing our challenges.'
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.
Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.
Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?
I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.
It has appeared that from the inevitable laws of our nature, some human beings must suffer from want. These are the unhappy persons who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a blank.
We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt; culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and arational.
War gives the right to the conquerors to impose any condition they please upon the vanquished.
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