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33eb66d
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UP You wake up filled with dread. There seems no reason for it. Morning light sifts through the window, there is birdsong, you can't get out of bed. It's something about the crumpled sheets hanging over the edge like jungle foliage, the terry slippers gaping their dark pink mouths for your feet, the unseen breakfast--some of it in the refrigerator you do not dare to open--you will not dare to eat. What prevents you? The future. The future t..
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poetry
future
fear
past
life
forgiveness
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Margaret Atwood |
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133aebc
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I learned about religion the way most children learned about sex, [in the schoolyard]. . . . They terrified me by telling me there was a dead man in the sky watching everything I did and I retaliated by explaining where babies came from. Some of their mothers phoned mine to complain, though I think I was more upset than they were: they didn't believe me but I believed them.
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religion
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Margaret Atwood |
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a42e17c
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I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story, because after all I want you to hear it....By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you....Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are.
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writer
writing
storytelling
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Margaret Atwood |
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c5e1a3a
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She is about to add, "I have scars, inside me," but she stops herself. What is a scar, Oh Toby? That would be the next question. Then she'd have to explain what a scar is. A scar is like writing on your body. It tells about something that once happened to you, such as a cut on your skin where blood came out." --
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Margaret Atwood |
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bdcf7a2
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Murderess, murderess, he whispers to himself. It has an allure, a scent almost. Hothouse gardenias. Lurid, but also furtive. He imagines himself breathing it as he draws Grace towards him, pressing his mouth against her. Murderess. He applies it to her throat like a brand.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3cef150
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How dare she show herself to be everything he was so annoyed with her for not being?
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Margaret Atwood |
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06a76e0
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Why is war so much like a practical joke? she thinks. Hiding behind bushes, leaping out, with not much difference between Boo! and Bang! except the blood.
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Margaret Atwood |
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b5dd3fb
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But reality has too much darkness in it. Too many crows
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Margaret Atwood |
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cbe2e7f
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No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do badly by one another, we did as well as most. I wish she were here, so I could tell her I finally know this.
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Margaret Atwood |
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7bab957
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Art is long and life is brief and mortality looms.
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mortality
life
margaret-atwood
the-robber-bride
life-is-short
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Margaret Atwood |
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f9bb0c2
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friendship was always contingent.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3af7257
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Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I've found; but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them.
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Margaret Atwood |
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604314b
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It made him feel invisible--not that he wanted to feel anything else.
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Margaret Atwood |
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a7bf581
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He throws out radiance, it must be reflected sun. Why isn't everyone staring?
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Margaret Atwood |
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dd8886f
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The French are connoisseurs of sadness, they know all kinds. This is why they have bidets.
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Margaret Atwood |
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b988aaf
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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 had been evasive about it, at the time. There is a good deal of comfort, now, in remembering this.
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Margaret Atwood |
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1e3e99f
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SPRING POEM It is spring, my decision, the earth ferments like rising bread or refuse, we are burning last year's weeds, the smoke flares from the road, the clumped stalks glow like sluggish phoenixes / it wasn't only my fault / birdsongs burst from the feathered pods of their bodies, dandelions whirl their blades upwards, from beneath this decaying board a snake sidewinds, chained hide smelling of reptile sex / the hens roll in the dust, s..
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Margaret Atwood |
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450dc65
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Paper isn't important. It's the words on them that are important.
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Margaret Atwood |
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05046ad
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Walking into the crowd was like sinking into a stew - you became an ingredient, you took on a certain flavour.
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Margaret Atwood |
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e3f9679
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I've learned to do without a lot of things. If you have a lot of things, said Aunt Lydia, you get too attached to this material world and you forget about spiritual values.
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Margaret Atwood |
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2581d20
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Perhaps they were looking for passion; perhaps they delved into this book as into a mysterious parcel - a gift box at the bottom of which, hidden in layers of rustling tissue paper, lay something they'd always longed for but couldn't ever grasp.
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reading
readers
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Margaret Atwood |
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96f8091
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Why is it that we want so badly to memorialise ourselves? Even while we're still alive. we wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants. we put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It's all the same impulse. what do we hope from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simply attention, of any kind we..
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Margaret Atwood |
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bd2df57
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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.
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Margaret Atwood |
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913a6bd
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Thus the time passed. Toby stopped counting it. In any case, time is not a thing that passes, said Pilar: it's a sea on which you float.
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Margaret Atwood |
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cea4564
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We may call Eurydice forth from the world of the dead, but we cannot make her answer; and when we turn to look at her we glimpse her only for a moment, before she slips from our grasp and flees. As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them ..
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time
light
past
wisdom
eurydice
day
matrix
dystopia
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Margaret Atwood |
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dc1513c
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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.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ec73830
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We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat.
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Margaret Atwood |
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eea93f0
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That way nobody feels exploited." "Wait a minute," says Stan. "Nobody's exploited?" "I said nobody feels exploited," says Budge. "Different thing."
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Margaret Atwood |
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4915748
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But in the closeness of the sewing room, Simon can smell her as well as look at her. He tries to pay no attention but her scent is a distracting undercurrent. She smells like smoke; smoke, and laundry soap, and the salt from her skin; and she smells of the skin itself, with its undertone of dampness, fullness, ripeness - what? Ferns and mushrooms; fruits crushed and fermenting.
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Margaret Atwood |
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fe6592e
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She knows she's deceiving herself about that, but she prefers to deceive herself. She desperately needs to believe such pure joy is still possible.
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Margaret Atwood |
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0d56094
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Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win.
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Margaret Atwood |
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85faf31
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Which does a man prefer? Bacon and eggs, or worship? Sometimes one, sometimes the other, depending how hungry he is.
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Margaret Atwood |
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d911e04
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Now she imagines him dreaming. She imagines him dreaming of her, as she is dreaming of him. Through a sky the color of wet slate they fly towards each other on dark invisible wings.
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Margaret Atwood |
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f02bdfb
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Sanity is a valuable possession: I hoard it the way people once hoarded money.
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Margaret Atwood |
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a8aaa85
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We have learned to see the world in gasps.
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inspiration
hope
restriction
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Margaret Atwood |
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4ea9c97
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She had her reasons. Not that they were the same as anybody else's reasons.
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Margaret Atwood |
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48bd2db
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I have a fork and a spoon, but never a knife... as if I'm lacking manual skills or teeth. I have both, however. That's why I'm not allowed a knife.
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Margaret Atwood |
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30c669a
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Live in the present, make the most of it, it's all you've got.
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Margaret Atwood |
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d66f498
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A great fear came over me, and my body went entirely cold, and I stood as if paralyzed with fear; for I knew that the horse was no earthly horse, but the pale horse that will be sent at the Day of Reckoning, and the rider of it is Death; and it was Death himself who stood behind me, with his arms wrapped around me as tight as iron bands, and his lipless mouth kissing my neck as if in love. But as well as the horror, I also felt a strange lo..
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Margaret Atwood |
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256bed5
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The sun was up, the room already too warm. Light filtered in through the net curtains, hanging suspended in the air, sediment in a pond. My head felt like a sack of pulp. Still in my nightgown, damp from some fright I'd pushed aside like foliage, I pulled myself up and out of my tangled bed, then forced myself through the usual dawn rituals - the ceremonies we perform to make ourselves look sane and acceptable to other people. The hair must..
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sleep
wake-up
waking-up
sleeping
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Margaret Atwood |
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0af48d1
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We get along by a symbiotic adjustment of habits and with a minimum of that pale-mauve hostility you often find among women.
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Margaret Atwood |
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62f44ed
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Charis herself gave up Christianity a long time ago. For one thing, the Bible is full of meat: animals being sacrificed, lambs, bullocks, doves. Cain was right to offer up the vegetables, God was wrong to refuse them. And there's too much blood: people in the Bible are always having their blood spilled, blood on their hands, their blood licked up by dogs. There are too many slaughters, too much suffering, too many tears. She used to think s..
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Margaret Atwood |
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69be9ab
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More often than not, she acted as if she wanted to protect him, from the image of herself--herself in the past. She liked to keep only the bright side of herself turned towards him. She liked to shine.
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Margaret Atwood |
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9cbaf1e
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Knowledge is power only as long as you keep your mouth shut.
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Margaret Atwood |