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70bf45d
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Only a girl like this can know what's happened to you. If she were here she would reach out her arms towards you now, and touch you with her absent hands
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Margaret Atwood |
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3d127fc
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Humanity is so adaptable [...] Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.
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Margaret Atwood |
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f78b885
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I already told you," said Adam. "There is no need to swear." "Sorry, it just fucking slipped out," said Zeb."
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humour
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Margaret Atwood |
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4655b3b
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Every month there is a moon, gigantic, round, heavy, an omen. IT transits, pauses, continues on and passes out of sight, and I see despair coming towards me like famine. To feel that empty, again, again. I listen to my heart, wave upon wave, salty and red, continuing on and on, marking time.
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time
sadness
moon
space
sky
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Margaret Atwood |
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7732744
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I consider telling my brother, asking him for help. But tell him what exactly? I have no black eyes, no bloody noses to report: Cordelia does nothing physical. If it was boys, chasing or teasing, he would know what to do, but I don't suffer from boys in this way. Against girls and their indirectness, their whisperings, he would be helpless.
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friendships
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Margaret Atwood |
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80459e3
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I won't fatten them in cages, though. I won't ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won't change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won't drain out their life's blood. They can do all those things for themselves.
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Margaret Atwood |
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d9a7c29
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What's dangerous in the hands of the multitudes, he said, with what may or may not have been irony, is safe enough for those whose motives are... Beyond reproach, I said. He nodded gravely. Impossible to tell whether or not he meant it.
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Margaret Atwood |
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db27f5b
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A Tennyson garden, heavy with scent, languid; the return of the word swoon.
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garden
sensuality
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Margaret Atwood |
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b16242d
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But mostly she likes the fact that there's a reason for every death, and only one murderer at a time, and things get figured out at the end, and the murderer always gets caught.
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Margaret Atwood |
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db6f675
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She's been a distraction for him, but not a necessity of life. More like a super-strong mint: intense while it lasted but quickly finished.
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Margaret Atwood |
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bf02c1e
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I am not a saint or a cripple,
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Margaret Atwood |
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2321f83
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Would I laugh?" "Matter of fact, you would," says Zeb. "Heart like shale. What you need is a good fracking."
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funny
shale
puns
pun
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Margaret Atwood |
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a517214
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He's a young man, my own age or a little older, which is young for a man although not for a woman, as at my age a woman is an old maid but a man is not an old bachelor until he's fifty, and even then there's still hope for the ladies, as Mary Whitney used to say.
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Margaret Atwood |
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a6105b4
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he doesn't know it, but this touching she does is not only compassionate, but possessive.
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Margaret Atwood |
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27fd820
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The only sure camouflage was unpredictability.
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truth
inspirational
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Margaret Atwood |
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bb0551f
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Yes, it does feel deceptively safer with two; but Thou is a slippery character. Every Thou I've known has had a way of going missing. They skip town or turn perfidious, or else the drop like flies and then where are you?
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Margaret Atwood |
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5da8231
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gazing down at the black water remembering all the stories of women who had thrown themselves into it. They'd done it for love, because that was the effect love had on you. It snuck up on you, it grabbed hold of you before you knew it, and then there was nothing you could do. Once you were in it- in love- you would be swept away, regardless. Or so the books had it.
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Margaret Atwood |
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d3e1c54
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When in doubt, when flat on your back, you can look at the ceiling. Who knows what you may see, up there? Funeral wreaths and angels, constellations of dust, stellar or otherwise, the puzzles left by spiders. There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.
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Margaret Atwood |
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f817a1b
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What pays for all this?" "Grief in the face of inevitable death. The wish to stop time. The human condition."
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Margaret Atwood |
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a608554
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Condoms seemed to her inherently wicked. But they were also inherently funny. They were like rubber gloves with only one finger, and every time she saw one she had to be severe with herself or she'd get the giggles, a terrifying thought because the man might think you were laughing at him, at his dick, at its size, and that would be fatal.
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sex
men
women
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Margaret Atwood |
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5edcfdb
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Is it real? No, it is not real. What is this not real? Not real can tell us about real.
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Margaret Atwood |
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e9c4a17
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She would roll up her sleeves and dispense with sentimentality, and do whatever blood-soaked, bad-smelling thing had to be done. She would become adept with axes.
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sentimentality
blood
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Margaret Atwood |
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44252f3
|
Daughters of Naiads were a dime a dozen in those days; the place was crawling with them. Nevertheless, it never hurts to be of semi-divine birth. Or it never hurts immediately.
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Margaret Atwood |
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502d4a7
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How can I teach her some way of being human that won't destroy her I would like to tell her, Love is enough, I would like to say, Find shelter in another skin. I would like to say, Dance and be happy. Instead I will say in my crone's voice, Be ruthless when you have to, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it.
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Margaret Atwood |
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e013fb4
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And then I thought: 'It's for a warning,'" she continues. "You may think a bed is a peaceful thing, sir. For you it may mean rest, and comfort, and a good night's sleep. But it isn't so for everyone. There are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed. It's where we are born, that's our first peril in life. It's where women give birth, which is often their last. And it's where the act takes place between men and women sir, which I ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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c2d48c0
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Human tool-makers always make tools that will help us get what we want, and what we want hasn't changed for thousands of years because as far as we can tell the human template hasn't changed either. We still want the purse that will always be filled with gold, and the Fountain of Youth. We want the table that will cover itself with delicious food whenever we say the word, and that will be cleaned up afterwards by invisible servants. We want..
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science
tools
desire
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Margaret Atwood |
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346128b
|
She gives him an LED smile: light, but no heat.
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Margaret Atwood |
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bdc9d5a
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But I have already told the beginning, so right now it's the middle. And Zeb is in the middle of the story about Zeb. He is in the middle of his own story. I am not in this part of the story; it hasn't come to the part with me. But I'm waiting, far off in the future. I'm waiting for the story of Zeb to join up with mine. The story of Toby. The story I am in right now, with you.
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story
storytelling
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Margaret Atwood |
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56be262
|
But I was the daughter of a Naiad. Behave like water, I told myself. Don't try to oppose them. When they try to grasp you, slip through their fingers. Flow around them.
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Margaret Atwood |
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d2b4066
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She doesn't make speeches anymore. She has become speechless. She stays in her home, but it doesn't seem to agree with her. How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word.
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Margaret Atwood |
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16f26a1
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As you ramble on through life, Brother, Whatever be your goal, Keep your eye upon the doughnut, And not upon the hole.
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great-advice
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Margaret Atwood |
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0aecd39
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The rest of his life. How long that time had once felt to him. How quickly it has sped by. How much of it has been wasted. How soon it will be over.
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Margaret Atwood |
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c8a5760
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The story of Zenia ought to begin when Zenia began. It must have been someplace long ago and distant in space, thinks Tony; someplace bruised, and very tangled. A European print, hand-tinted, ochre-coloured, with dusty sunlight and a lot of bushes in it- bushes with thick leaves and ancient twisted roots, behind which, out of sight in the undergrowth and hinted at only by a boot protruding, or a slack hand, something ordinary but horrifying..
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Margaret Atwood |
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9e282b7
|
In the daylight we know what's gone is gone, but at night it's different. Nothing gets finished, not dying, not mourning;
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mourning
grief
dream
dreams
nightmares
nightmare
dying
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Margaret Atwood |
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80ae587
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He was not a monster, she said. People say he was a monster, but he was not one. What could she have been thinking about? Not much, I guess; not back then, not at the time. She was thinking about how not to think. The times were abnormal. She took pride in her appearance. She did not believe he was a monster. He was not a monster, to her. Probably he had some endearing trait: he whistled, off key, in the shower, he had a yen for truffles, ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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7158671
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There are to be no toeholds for love. We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.
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Margaret Atwood |
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5556764
|
Stretch your hand towards those gentle eyes that regard you with such trust
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Margaret Atwood |
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16767ba
|
None of them was willing to be a girl," he said. "You can see why not." "I know, right? I don't blame them," she said with a hard edge to her voice. "Being a girl is the pits, trust me." --
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Margaret Atwood |
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68e0701
|
To want is to have a weakness. It's this weakness, whatever it is, that entices me. It's like a small crack in a wall, before now impenetrable.
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Margaret Atwood |
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35e820e
|
What we prayed for was emptiness, so we would be worthy to be filled: with grace, with love, with self-denial, semen and babies.
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Margaret Atwood |
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56bb540
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She who weeps when the sun's in sky, Will never pile the platter high.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ffca0bc
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When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion;
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Margaret Atwood |
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ab218cd
|
The trouble is all in the knob at the top of our bodies. I'm not against the body or the head either: only the neck, which creates the illusion that they are separate. The language is wrong, it shouldn't have different words for them. If the head extended directly into the shoulders like a worm's or a frog's without that constriction, that lie, they wouldn't be able to look down at their bodies and move them around as if they were robots or..
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Margaret Atwood |
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b291d1c
|
There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.
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Margaret Atwood |