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Roughing It Builds A Boy's Character, But Only Certain Kinds Of Roughing It.
-Margaret Atwood
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Roughing It Builds A

Margaret Atwood
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Roughing It Builds A Boy's Character, But Only Certain Kinds Of Roughing It.

Understanding the Quote: "roughing it builds a boy's character, but only certain kinds of roughing..."

This quote by Margaret Atwood reflects deeply on the theme of character. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Character, Boys, Kind, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Margaret Atwood interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is celebrated for insightful thoughts on character and boys. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 80128
Topic
Character
Boys
Kind
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When You Are In The Middle Of A Story It Isn't A Story At All, But Only A Confusion; A Dark Roaring, A Blindness, A Wreckage Of Shattered Glass And Splintered Wood; Like A House In A Whirlwind, Or Else A Boat Crushed By The Icebergs Or Swept Over The Rapids, And All Aboard Powerless To Stop It. It's Only Afterwards That It Becomes Anything Like A Story At All. When You Are Telling It, To Yourself Or To Someone Else.
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Glenn Used To Say The Reason You Can't Really Imagine Yourself Being Dead Was That As Soon As You Say, 'i'll Be Dead,' You've Said The Word I, And So You're Still Alive Inside The Sentence. And That's How People Got The Idea Of The Immortality Of The Soul - It Was A Consequence Of Grammar.
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Which Of Us Can Resist The Temptation Of Being Thought Indispensable?
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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.
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Without The Light, No Chance; Without The Dark, No Dance.
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I Think Of Bad News As A Huge Bird, With The Wings Of A Crow And The Face Of My Grade Four School Teacher, Sparse Bun, Rancid Teeth, Wrinkly Frown, Pursed Mouth And All, Sailing Around The World Under Cover Of Darkness Pleased To Be The Bearer Of Ill Tidings, Carrying A Basket Of Rotten Eggs, And Knowing- As The Sun Comes Up- Exactly Where To Drop Them. On Me, For One.
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I Did ... Learn An Important Distinction In Graduate School: A Speculation About Who Had Syphilis When Is Gossip If It's About Your Friends, A Plot Element If It's About A Character In A Novel, And Scholarship If It's About John Keats.
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Cutting
Forever
Throat
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Vintage
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Writing
Safety Pins
Broken
Anyway, Maybe There Weren't Any Solutions. Human Society, Corpses And Rubble. It Never Learned, It Made The Same Cretinous Mistakes Over And Over, Trading Short-term Gain For Long-term Pain.
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Mistake
Long
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Novel
Vehicle
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Powerful
United States
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I Am Not A Saint Or A Cripple, I Am Not A Wound; Now I Will See Whether I Am A Coward.
Coward
Saint
Cripples
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Arrogance
My Good Intentions Are Completely Lethal.
Funny
Humor
Good Intentions
Writers Are Much Better Behaved Nowadays, For A Couple Of Reasons. Once Upon A Time Nobody Was Thinking Of A Career, Unless You Lived In New York, So There Wasn't As Much Pressure To Present A Respectable Exterior. And Secondly, There Was No Social Media. So If You Were Found Face Down On The Floor - People Did Do That Quite A Bit; Usually Men, But Not Always - Or Fell Through Plate Glass Windows Or Got Into Scrapes, It Became A Rumor, And Rumors Are Hard To Pin Down.
New York
Couple
Writing
I Did Not Know How To Paint Or Even What To Paint, But I Knew I Had To Begin.
Paint
Know How
Knows
Everybody Acts As If They Have Free Will. They Act As If They Can Make These Decisions; Do They Know They Don't? I Think There's Been Some Back-down On The Idea That Everything Is Determined.
Thinking
Ideas
Decision
Why Aren't We Investing More In Alternate Tech? The Saudi Arabians Are, Scottish Power Is. I Was Just There. Could It Be That We're Counting On The Oil Going On Forever And Ever And Ever And Us Having All Of It And Getting Very Rich?
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Forever
Investing
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Relationship
Women
Laughing
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Pay
Undertaker
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Looks
Lips
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Skulls
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Should
Remembered
Those Walls And Bars Are There For A Reason,” Said Crake. “not To Keep Us Out, But To Keep Them In. Mankind Needs Barriers In Both Cases.” “them?” “nature And God.” “i Thought You Didn’t Believe In God,” Said Jimmy. “i Don’t Believe In Nature Either,” Said Crake. “or Not With A Capital N.
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Believe
Needs
I Myself Discovered Many Authors Through School Reading Lists And Through School Anthologies. The Positives Are: Young Readers Can Find The World Opening Up To Them Through Books They Study. The Negatives May Include Bad Experiences Kids Have - If They Don't Like The Book Or The Teacher, Or The Way The Book Is Taught.
Teacher
Book
Reading
And Sometimes It Happened, For A Time. That Kind Of Love Comes And Goes And Is Hard To Remember Afterwards, Like Pain. You Would Look At The Man One Day And You Would Think, I Loved You, And The Tense Would Be Past, And You Would Be Filled With A Sense Of Wonder, Because It Was Such An Amazing And Precarious And Dumb Thing To Have Done; And You Would Know Too Why Your Friends Have Been Evasive About It, At The Time.
Love
Pain
Past
I Thought Everyone Would Be Familiar With This Figure: If I'd Studied A Thing In School I Assumed It Was General Knowledge. I Hadn't Yet Discovered That I Lived In A Sort Of Transparent Balloon, Drifting Over The World Without Making Much Contact With It, And That The People I Knew Appeared To Me At A Different Angle From The One At Which They Appeared To Themselves; And That The Reverse Was Also True. I Was Smaller To Others, Up There In My Balloon, Than I Was To Myself. I Was Also Blurrier.
School
People
Different
I Want Everything Back, The Way It Was. But There Is No Point To It, This Wanting.
Want
Way
No Point
History, As I Recall, Was Never This Winsome, And Especially Not This Clean, But The Real Thing Would Never Sell: Most People Prefer A Past In Which Nothing Smells.
Real
Past
Smell
Starlet Sex Scandal. Giant Squid Involved.
Sex
Squids
Giants
If You Disagree With Your Government, That's Political. If You Disagree With Your Government That Is Approaching Theocracy, Then You're Evil.
Government
Evil
Political
I Learned To Read Very Early So I Could Read The Comics, Which I Then Started To Draw.
Draws
We Have Begun To Slam Doors, And To Throw Things. I Throw My Purse, An Ashtray, A Package Of Chocolate Chips, Which Breaks On Impact. We Are Picking Up Chocolate Chips For Days. Jon Throws A Glass Of Milk, The Milk, Not The Glass: He Knows His Own Strength, As I Do Not. He Throws A Box Of Cheerios, Unopened. The Things I Throw Miss, Although They Are Worse Things. The Things He Throws Hit, But Are Harmless. I Begin To See How The Line Is Crossed, Between Histrionics And Murder.
Impact
Glasses
Doors
We've Learned To See The World In Gasps.
World
As I Was Whizzing Around The United States On Yet Another Demented Book Tour, Getting Up At Four In The Morning To Catch Planes, Doing Two Cities A Day, Eating The Pringle Food Object Out Of The Mini-bar At Night As I Crawled Around On The Hotel Room Floor, Too Tired Even To Phone Room Service, I Thought, 'there Must Be A Better Way Of Doing This'.
Morning
Book
Tired
Reality Simply Consists Of Different Points Of View.
Reality
Views
Different
It Isn't Running Away They're Afraid Of. We Wouldn't Get Far. It's Those Other Escapes, The Ones You Can Open In Yourself, Given A Cutting Edge.
Running
Cutting
Given
The Eskimos Had Fifty-two Names For Snow Because It Was Important To Them: There Ought To Be As Many For Love.
Love
Valentines Day
Names
But We Still Find The World Astounding, We Can't Get Enough Of It; Even As It Shrivels, Even As Its Many Lights Flicker And Are Extinguished (the Tigers, The Leopard Frogs, The Plunging Dolphin Flukes), Flicker And Are Extinguished, By Us, By Us, We Gaze And Gaze. Where Do You Draw The Line, Between Love And Greed? We Never Did Know, We Always Wanted More. We Want To Take It All In, For One Last Time, We Want To Eat The World With Our Eyes.
Eye
Light
Greed
Reading And Writing, Like Everything Else, Improve With Practice. And, Of Course, If There Are No Young Readers And Writers, There Will Shortly Be No Older Ones. Literacy Will Be Dead, And Democracy - Which Many Believe Goes Hand In Hand With It - Will Be Dead As Well.
Reading
Believe
Writing
... All This Talking, This Rather Liquid Confessing, Was Something I Didn't Think I Could Ever Bring Myself To Do. It Seemed Foolhardy To Me, Like An Uncooked Egg Deciding To To Come Out Of Its Shell: There Would Be A Risk Of Spreading Out Too Far, Turning Into A Formless Puddle.
Thinking
Talking
Eggs
But Remember That Forgiveness Too Is A Power. To Beg For It Is A Power, And To Withhold Or Bestow It Is A Power, Perhaps The Greatest. Maybe None Of This Is About Control. Maybe It Isn't Really About Who Can Own Whom, Who Can Do What To Whom And Get Away With It, Even As Far As Death. Maybe It Isn't About Who Can Sit And Who Has To Kneel Or Stand Or Lie Down, Legs Spread Open. Maybe It's About Who Can Do What To Whom And Be Forgiven For It. Never Tell Me It Amounts To The Same Thing.
Lying
Legs
Remember
My Parents Were Gardeners Themselves, And Perforce They Used Environmental Techniques Because It Was During The War, And You Didn't Have The New Sorts Of Chemicals.
War
Parent
Environmental
It Wasn't So Easy Though, Ending The War. A War Is A Huge Fire; The Ashes From It Drift Far, And Settle Slowly.
War
Fire
Ashes
By Telling You Anything At All I'm At Least Believing In You, I Believe You're There, I Believe You Into Being.
Believe
I Believe
Handmaids Tale
What We Share May Be A Lot Like A Traffic Accident But We Get One Another. We Are Survivors Of Each Other. We Have Been Shark To One Another, But Also Lifeboat. That Counts For Something.
Sharks
Survivor
May
It's His Word Against The Commander's, Unless He Wants To Head A Posse. Kick In The Door, And What Did I Tell You? Caught In The Act, Sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, Eat Those Words.
Doors
Want
Posse
The Temptation Is To Stay Inside; To Subside Into The Kind Of Recluse Whom Neighborhood Children Regard With Derision And Little Awe; To Let The Hedges And Weeds Grow Up, To Allow The Doors To Rust Shut, To Lie On My Bed In Some Gown-shaped Garment And Let My Hair Lengthens And Spread Out Over The Pillow And My Fingernails To Sprout Into Claws, While Candle Wax Drips Onto The Carpet. But Long Ago I Made A Choice Between Classicism And Romanticism. I Prefer To Be Upright And Contained—an Urn In Daylight.
Weed
Children
Growing Up
It Doesn't Really Matter What "genre" Your Book Is. What Matters Is That It's A Good Book Of Its Kind. Whatever That Kind May Be.
Book
What Matters
May
He Might Die For Her, But Living For Her Would Be Quite Different.
Different
Would Be
Might
We Understand More Than We Know.
Understanding
Knows
And Each Of His Voices Left His Body In A Different Colored Soul And Floated Up Towards The Sun Still Singing.
Voice
Soul
Singing
Then Sail, My Fine Lady, On The Billowing Wave - The Water Below Is As Dark As The Grave, And Maybe You'll Sink In Your Little Blue Boat - It's Hope, And Hope Only, That Keeps Us Afloat
Dark
Blue
Water
Blondes Are Like White Mice, You Only Find Them In Cages. They Wouldn’t Last Long In Nature. They’re Too Conspicuous.
White
Long
Cages
Good Writing Takes Place At Intersections, At What You Might Call Knots, At Places Where The Society Is Snarled Or Knotted Up.
Writing
Might
Knots
The Truth, It Seems, Is Not Just What You Find When You Open A Door: It Is Itself A Door, Which The Poet Is Always On The Verge Of Going Through.
Truth
Doors
Poetry
Their Mothers Had Finally Caught Up To Them And Been Proven Right. There Were Consequences After All But They Were The Consequences To Things You Didn't Even Know You'd Done.
Inspiring
Mothers Day
Done
Some Days I Do Appreciate Things More, Eggs, Flowers, But Then I Decide I'm Only Having An Attack Of Sentimentality, My Brain Going Pastel Technicolor, Like A Beautiful-sunset Greeting Cards They Used To Make So Many Of In California. High-gloss Hearts. The Danger Is Grayout.
Beautiful
Flower
Heart
In The Evenings There's Been Thunder, A Distant Bumping And Stumbling, Like God On A Sullen Binge.
Weather
Evening
Sullen
You Fit Into Me Like A Hook Into An Eye A Fish Hook An Open Eye
Eye
Hook
Fit
We Pulled The Seeds Out And Scattered Them On Their Flossy Parachutes, Leaving Only The Leathery Brownish Yellow Tongue, Soft As The Inside Of An Elbow.
Yellow
Leaving
Elbows
Maybe Sadness Was A Kind Of Hunger, She Thought. Maybe The Two Went Together.
Sadness
Two
Together
I Was Sand, I Was Snow—written On, Rewritten, Smoothed Over.
Snow
Sand
Written
Anybody Who Writes A Book Is An Optimist. First Of All, They Think They're Going To Finish It. Second, They Think Somebody's Going To Publish It. Third, They Think Somebody's Going To Read It. Fourth, They Think Somebody's Going To Like It. How Optimistic Is That?
Book
Writing
Optimistic
I Feel Like Cotton Candy: Sugar And Air. Squeeze Me And I’d Turn Into A Small Sickly Damp Wad Of Weeping Pinky-red.
Air
Cotton Candy
Sugar
Mary Baker Eddy Is Said To Have Had A Phone Installed In Her Coffin Just In Case She Happened To Wake Up. I've Been Told That's An Urban Myth. Somebody Should Check It Out.
Phones
Bakers
Coffins
It's A Feature Of Our Age That If You Write A Work Of Fiction, Everyone Assumes That The People And Events In It Are Disguised Biography — But If You Write Your Biography, It's Equally Assumed You're Lying Your Head Off.
Lying
Book
Writing
I Am Not My Childhood,' Snowman Says Out Loud.
Childhood
Snowman
Loud
The Fabric Of Democracy Is Always Fragile Everywhere Because It Depends On The Will Of Citizens To Protect It, And When They Become Scared, When It Becomes Dangerous For Them To Defend It, It Can Go Very Quickly.
Democracy
Fabric
Citizens
We All Know That A Book Is Not Really A Person. It Isn’t A Human Being. But If You Are A Lover Of Books As Books – As Objects, That Is – And Ignore The Human Element In Them – That Is, Their Voices – You Will Be Committing An Error Of The Soul, Because You Will Be An Idolator, Or Else A Fetishist.
Book
Errors
Voice
Reading ... Changes You. You Aren't The Same Person After You've Read A Particular Book As You Were Before, And You Will Read The Next Book, Unless Both Are Harlequin Romances, In A Slightly Different Way.
Reading
Book
Romance
There Are Some Virtues To Not Saying What You Think All The Time.
Thinking
Silence
Virtue
How Shrunk, How Dwindled, In Our Times Creation's Mighty Seed - For Man Has Broke The Fellowship With Murder, Lust, And Greed.
Men
Greed
Lust
Knowledge Is Power Only As Long As You Keep Your Mouth Shut.
Knowledge
Long
Mouths
Without The Protection Of Surliness And Levity, All Children Would Be Crushed By The Past—the Past Of Others, Loaded Onto Their Shoulders. Selfishness Is Their Saving Grace.
Children
Past
Grace
If A God Showed Up Every Time You Put A Quarter In The Prayer Slot It Wouldn't Be God, It Would Be A Puppet That You Could Control By Doing That...that Would Make The Deity Subservient To You. So It Wouldn't Be A Deity Would It?
Prayer
Would Be
Puppets
I Didn't Go To School For A Full Year Until I Was 12. In The Summer I Was A Wild Child In The Woods, With No Shoes, And In The Fall It Was Back To The City, Shoe Shops And School.
Summer
Children
Fall
Maybe The Life I Think I'm Living Is A Paranoid Delusion...sanity Is A Valuable Possession; I Hoard It The Way People Once Hoarded Money. I Save It, So I Will Have Enough, When The Time Comes.
Thinking
People
Way
Why Is It He Feels Some Line Has Been Crossed, Some Boundary Transgressed? How Much Is Too Much, How Far Is Too Far?
Lines
Too Much
Boundaries
Myths Can't Be Translated As They Did In Their Ancient Soil. We Can Only Find Our Own Meaning In Our Own Time.
Soil
Ancient
Myth
Art Happens. It Happens When You Have The Craft And The Vocation And Are Waiting For Something Else, Something Extra, Or Maybe Not Waiting; In Any Case It Happens. It's The Extra Rabbit Coming Out Of The Hat, The One You Didn't Put There.
Art
Waiting
Crafts
I Have Never Had Any Problems With Editors Who Wanted Me To Change My Methods Or Point Of View. I Pay A Lot Of Attention To Editors, But In A Different Way. They Sometimes Catch Mistakes And Help With The Order Of Poems In A Book. I Do Not Underestimate Them! Indeed, I Have Been One Myself.
Mistake
Book
Views
A Home Filled With Nothing But Yourself. It's Heavy, That Lightness. It's Crushing, That Emptiness.
Crush
Home
Emptiness
I Grew Up With The Biologists. I Know How They Think.
Thinking
Grew Up
Biologist
Richard Liked To Say He Picked Things Up For A Song, Which Was Odd, Because He Never Sang. He Never Even Whistled. He Was Not A Musical Person.
Music
Song
Odd
We Have Been Shark To One Another, But Also Lifeboat.
Sharks
Lifeboats
Has Beens
You're Sad Because You're Sad. It's Psychic. It's The Age. It's Chemical. Go See A Shrink Or Take A Pill, Or Hug Your Sadness Like An Eyeless Doll You Need To Sleep. Well, All Children Are Sad But Some Get Over It. Count Your Blessings. Better Than That, Buy A Hat. Buy A Coat Or A Pet. Take Up Dancing To Forget.
Children
Sadness
Sleep
There's Blood, A Taste I Remember. It Tastes Of Orange Popsicles, Penny Gumballs, Red Licorice, Gnawed Hair, Dirty Ice.
Dirty
Blood
Ice
Books Are Frozen Voices, In The Same Way That Musical Scores Are Frozen Music. The Score Is A Way Of Transmitting The Music To Someone Who Can Play It, Releasing It Into The Air Where It Can Once More Be Heard. And The Black Alphabet Marks On The Page Represent Words That Were Once Spoken, If Only In The Writer's Head. They Lie There Inert Until A Reader Comes Along And Transforms The Letters Into Living Sounds. The Reader Is The Musician Of The Book: Each Reader May Read The Same Text, Just As Each Violinist Plays The Same Piece, But Each Interpretation Is Different.
Lying
Book
Air
Ignoring Isn’t The Same As Ignorance, You Have To Work At It.
Ignorance
Handmaids Tale
Handmaids
What’s With Her?” Says The Painter. “she’s Mad Because She’s A Woman,” Jon Says. This Is Something I Haven’t Heard For Years, Not Since High School. Once It Was A Shaming Thing To Say, And Crushing To Have It Said About You, By A Man. It Implied Oddness, Deformity, Sexual Malfunction. I Go To The Living Room Doorway. “i’m Not Mad Because I’m A Woman,” I Say. “i’m Mad Because You’re An Asshole.
Crush
School
Men
Toast Was A Pointless Invention From The Dark Ages. Toast Was An Implement Of Torture That Caused All Those Subjected To It To Regurgitate In Verbal Form The Sins And Crimes Of Their Past Lives. Toast Was A Ritual Item Devoured By Fetishists In The Belief That It Would Enhance Their Kinetic And Sexual Powers. Toast Cannot Be Explained By Any Rational Means. Toast Is Me. I Am Toast.
Mean
Dark
Past
The Future Of Narrative? Built In, Part Of The Human Template. Not Going Away. The Future Of The Codex Book, With Pages And So Forth? A Platform For Transmitting Narratives. There Are Others. The Scroll Is Coming Back (twitter Is A Scroll.) Short Forms Are Returning Online. Interactivity Is Coming Back; It Was Always There In Oral Storytelling. Each Form Has Its Pluses And Its Minuses.
Book
Going Away
Storytelling
What Am I Living For And What Am I Dying For Are The Same Question.
Dying
This Is The Middle Of My Life, I Think Of It As A Place, Like The Middle Of A River, The Middle Of A Bridge, Halfway Across, Halfway Over. I'm Supposed To Have Accumulated Things By Now: Possessions, Responsibilities, Achievements, Experience And Wisdom. I'm Supposed To Be A Person Of Substance.
Responsibility
Thinking
Bridges
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