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7e50b3b
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I want my father to be just my father, the way he has always been, not a separate person with an earlier, mythological life of his own. 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.
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parents
knowledge
father
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Margaret Atwood |
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fa40588
|
That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first in your head, and then you make it real.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ce0b557
|
Walking was not fast enough so we ran. Running was not fast enough, so we galloped. Galloping was not fast enough, so we sailed. Sailing was not fast enough, so we rolled merrily along on long metal tracks. Long metal tracks were not fast enough, so we drove. Driving was not fast enough, so we flew. Flying isn't fast enough, not fast enough for us. We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can go only as ..
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progress
people
speed
souls
humans
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Margaret Atwood |
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bd308b7
|
I hunger to commit the act of touch.
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Margaret Atwood |
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01e3234
|
It's clear, it's fresh, like a mint candy.
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Margaret Atwood |
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b42a769
|
History is a construct...Any point of entry is possible and all choices are arbitrary. Still there are definitive moments...We can look at these events and say that after them things were never the same again.
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history
womens-history
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Margaret Atwood |
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ca4e749
|
Sanity is a valuable possession.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ad2b656
|
Nature full strength is more than we can take, Adam One used to say. It's a potent hallucinogen, a soporific, for the untrained Soul. We're no longer at home in it. We need to dilute it. We can't drink it straight. And God is the same. Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered.
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the-year-of-the-flood
toby
scifi
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Margaret Atwood |
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36649ad
|
There was old sex in the room and loneliness, and expectation, of something without a shape or name. I remember that yearning, and was never the same as the hands that were on us there and then, in the small of the back, or out back, in the parking lot, or in the television room with the sound turned down and only the pictures flickering over lifting flesh. We yearned for the future How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?
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loneliness
sex
insatiability
yearning
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Margaret Atwood |
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5fa4a52
|
There is the staircase, there is the sun. There is the kitchen, the plate with toast and strawberry jam, your subterfuge, your ordinary mirage. You stand red-handed. You want to wash yourself in earth, in rocks and grass What are you supposed to do with all this loss? In the daylight we know what's gone is gone, but at night it's different. Nothing gets finished, not dying, not mourning; the dead repeat themselves, like clumsy drunks lurchi..
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poetry
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Margaret Atwood |
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e8405ed
|
We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.
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revisionism
self
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Margaret Atwood |
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8410667
|
It's the end of the world every day, for someone.
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life
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Margaret Atwood |
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a42ba22
|
How much misery...how much needless despair has been caused by a series of biological mismatches, a misalignment of the hormones and pheromones? Resulting in the fact that the one you love so passionately won't or can't love you. As a species we're pathetic in that way: imperfectly monogamous. If only we could pair-bond for life, like gibbons, or else opt for total-guilt free promiscuity, there'd be no more sexual torment. You'd never want ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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4f12882
|
She's against it on principle, and life isn't run on principles but by adjustments
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Margaret Atwood |
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61452a6
|
I thought, men who changed their names were likely to be con-men, criminals, undercover agents or magicians, whereas women who changed their names were probably just married.
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Margaret Atwood |
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f7fd47a
|
Envoi we had no voice we had no name we had no choice we had one face one face the same we took the blame it was no fair but now w're here we're all here too the same as you and now we follow you, we find you now, we call to you to you too wit too woo too wit too woo too woo (The Maids sprout feathers, and fly away as owls.)
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Margaret Atwood |
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429bcc0
|
You're clear, Mr. Duke." Grins from both of them. What could Felix possibly be suspected of smuggling, a harmless old thespian like him? It's the words that should concern you, he thinks at them. That's the real danger. Words don't show up on scanners."
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Margaret Atwood |
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15bc693
|
The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ffd14f3
|
The ancestral voices were prophesying war because ancestral voices never shut up, and they hate to be wrong, and war is a sure thing, sooner or later.
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war
the-blind-assassin
prophesy
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Margaret Atwood |
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bda31e0
|
Gender roles suck," says Swift Fox. Then you should stop playing them, thinks Toby."
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women
manipulation
gender-roles
|
Margaret Atwood |
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2b5fdd3
|
I was taking something away from her, although she didn't know it. I was filching. Never mind that it was something she apparently didn't want or had no use for, had rejected even; still, it was hers, and if I took it away, this mysterious "it" I couldn't quite define."
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romance
|
Margaret Atwood |
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b820aaf
|
But unshed tears can turn rancid. So can memory. So can biting your tongue. My bad nights were beginning. I couldn't sleep.
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sleep
tears
|
Margaret Atwood |
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4d2d2b5
|
He has been trying to sing
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Margaret Atwood |
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7e8de52
|
What restless woman can resist a man with a shovel in one hand and a glowing rose bush in the other, and a moderately crazed glitter in his eyes that might be mistaken for love?
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Margaret Atwood |
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e7f6eb4
|
Nature demands variety, for men. It stands to reason, it's a part of the procreational strategy. It's Nature's Plan. Women know that instinctively. Why did they buy so many different clothes, in the old days? To trick the men into thinking they were several different women. A new one each day.
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Margaret Atwood |
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a32ec50
|
Jimmy had been full of himself back then, thinks Snowman with indulgence and a little envy. He'd been unhappy too, of course. It went without saying, his unhappiness. He'd put a lot of energy into it.
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Margaret Atwood |
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97f409e
|
Romantic people are not supposed to laugh, I know that much from looking at the pictures.
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Margaret Atwood |
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43320f8
|
Toast is me. I am toast.
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Margaret Atwood |
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b590ff6
|
She looks like a very young old person, or a very old young person; but then, she's looked that way ever since she was two.
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humor
|
Margaret Atwood |
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8f2702a
|
We should think only beautiful things, as much as we can. There is so much beautiful in the world if you look around. You are only looking at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy. It's not good for you.
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Margaret Atwood |
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07aeb51
|
It's a good excuse, though, orphanhood. It explains everything--every mistake and wrong turn. As Sherlock Holmes declared. She had no mother to advise her. How we long for it, that lack of advice! Imprudence could have been ours. Passionate affairs. Reckless adventures. Of course we're grateful for our stable upbringings, our hordes of informative relatives, our fleece-lined advantages, our lack of dramatic plots. But there's a corner of en..
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Margaret Atwood |
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907a8d6
|
This puts him in an instructive mood, and I can see he is going to teach me something, which gentlemen are fond of doing.
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Margaret Atwood |
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da23853
|
According to Adam One, the Fall of Man was multidimensional. The ancestral primates fell out of the trees; then they fell from vegetarianism into meat-eating. Then they fell from instinct into reason, and thus into technology; from simple signals into complex grammar, and thus into humanity; from firelessness into fire, and thence into weaponry; and from seasonal mating into an incessant sexual twitching. Then they fell from a joyous life i..
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morality
religion
|
Margaret Atwood |
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7d49640
|
Why can't I believe? she asked the darkness. Behind her eyelids she saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned. It gazed at her. She gazed at it. "You are the effect of a carefully calibrated blend of plant toxins," she told it. Then she fell asleep."
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Margaret Atwood |
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32699c0
|
Point being that you don't have to get too worked up about us, dear educated minds. You don't have to think of us as real girls, real flesh and blood, real pain, real injustice. That might be too upsetting. Just discard the sordid part. Consider us pure symbol. We're no more real than money.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ea719c3
|
She who pays the undertaker calls the tune.
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Margaret Atwood |
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b749ecd
|
But it seems she'd wanted children after all, because when she was told she'd been accidentally sterilized she could feel all the light leaking out of her.
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Margaret Atwood |
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20fcc8c
|
Fear is synonymous with the future, and the future consists of forked roads, I should say forking roads, because the roads are forking all the time, like slow lightning. A road is a process, not a location.
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Margaret Atwood |
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33db63b
|
A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.
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silence
voice
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Margaret Atwood |
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d1c1a9d
|
Walking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will discover behind them something that will truly be worth seeing, she feels as if her feet are not on cement at all but on ice. The blade of the skate floats, she knows, on a thin film of water, which it melts by pressure and which freezes behind it. This is the freedom of the present tense, this sliding edge.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3cd5881
|
I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed
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Margaret Atwood |
|
d5d83a6
|
Had she believed all that? Old Pilar's folklore? No, not really; or not exactly. Most likely Pilar hadn't quite believed it either, but it was a reassuring story: that the dead were not entirely dead but were alive in a different way; a paler way admittedly, and somewhat darker. But still able to send messages, if only such messages could be recognized and deciphered. People need such stories, Pilar said once, because however dark, a darkne..
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|
darkness
folklore
stories
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
7470b69
|
I am like a room where things once happened and now nothing does, except the pollen of the weeds that grow up outside the window, blowing in as dust across the floor.
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Margaret Atwood |
|
d750c5c
|
One look at a banana and you can tell it came from outer space.
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Margaret Atwood |