|
6f0c824
|
She stood for a long time, breathing in and breathing in, the scent of the trees and dogs and night flowers and water, because this was the best thing, it was what she wanted, to be outside in the night by herself. She wasn't sick any longer.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
c433a6c
|
I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and just as complicated. But sometimes it's hard to put up with.
|
|
good
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
1f620c0
|
By the time he got around to meaning it, the words had sounded fraudulent to him and he'd been afraid to pronounce them.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
2d0984d
|
Then they fell from a joyous life in the moment into the anxious contemplation of the vanished past and the distant future.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
6a1063a
|
It is not only the body that travels, Adam One used to say, it is also the Soul. And the end of one journey is the beginning of another.
|
|
soul
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
1c80bc2
|
Nature may be dumb as a sack of hammers, Zeb used to say, but it's smarter than you.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
036c5e6
|
Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you..
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
7736f69
|
Unlike some other religions, we have never felt it served a higher purpose to lie to children about geology.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
acdfc49
|
How can I teach her some way of being human that won't destroy her?
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
81df839
|
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 for us. We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man c..
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
ec2dad6
|
I thought of myself as an itinerant brain--the equivalent of a strolling player of Elizabethan times, or else a troubadour, clutching my university degree like a cheap lute.
|
|
working
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
72f63fb
|
Falling in love... how could he have made such light of it? Sneered even. As if it was trivial for us, a frill, a whim. It was, on the contrary, heavy going. It was the central thing, the way you understood yourself.
|
|
understanding
love
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
2ed3462
|
All those years I'd kept an outline of my father in my head, like a chalk line enclosing a father-shaped space. When I was little, I'd coloured it in often enough. But those colours had been too bright and the outline had been too large...
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
70e715c
|
They say, Grace, why don't you ever smile or laugh, we never see you smiling, and I say I suppose Miss I have gotten out of the way of it, my face won't bend in that direction any more.
|
|
sadness
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
da5727f
|
Now she said, "I'm up to the four-letter words." And I said, "You mean the dirty ones, like shit?" And she laughed and said, "Worse ones than that." And I said, "You mean the c-word and the f-word?" and she said, "No. Like love."
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
067b4e9
|
The Chorus Line: The Birth of Telemachus, An Idyll Nine months he sailed the wine-red seas of his mother's blood Out of the cave of dreaded Night, of sleep, Of troubling dreams he sailed In his frail dark boat, the boat of himself, Through the dangerous ocean of his vast mother he sailed From the distant cave where the threads of men's lives are spun, Then measured, and then cut short By the Three Fatal Sisters, intent on their gruesome h..
|
|
heirs
mythos
maidens
pathos
pathetic-fallacy
hierarchy
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
44a95a9
|
Miranda nods, because she knows that to be true: noble people don't do things for the money, they simply have money, and that's what allows them to be noble. They don't really have to think about it much; they sprout benevolent acts the way trees sprout leaves.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
7828562
|
In the burned house I am eating breakfast. You understand? There is no house, there is no breakfast, yet here I am
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
c04142d
|
It's no good thinking you're invisible if you aren't
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
4f225ba
|
The sands of time are quicksands, said Adam One. So much can sink into them without a trace. And what a blessing when those things that sink away are needless worries.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
00432b3
|
there are some things that do not fare well in high definition.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
4eec8da
|
they lurk passively, like vampire sheep
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
4961627
|
For the heart was both key and lock, and he who could master the hearts of men and learn their secrets was well on the way to mastering the Fates and controlling the thread of his own destiny.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
8b899f4
|
Then I find I'm not ashamed after all. I enjoy the power; power of a dog bone, passive but there. I hope they get hard at the sight of us and have to rub themselves against the painted barriers, surreptitiously. They will suffer, later, at night, in their regimented beds. They have no outlets now except themselves, and that's a sacrilege.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
617fe39
|
Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
2f8ad73
|
I sort of like watching them," he said; "I watch laundromat washers the way other people watch television, it's soothing because you always know what to expect and you don't have to think about it. Except I can vary my programmes a little; if I get tired of watching the same stuff I can always put in a pair of green socks or something colourful like that."
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
f749e5a
|
From her handbag she takes a round gilt compact with violets on the cover. She opens it, unclosing her other self, and runs her fingertip around the corners of her mouth, left one, right one; then she unswivels a pink stick and dots her cheeks and blends them, changing her shape, performing the only magic left to her. Rump on a packsack, harem cushion, pink on the cheeks and black discreetly around the eyes, as red as blood as black as ebon..
|
|
feminism
women
sexism
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
e79efc3
|
Nothing is ever settled," says Jocelyn. "Every day is different. Isn't it better to do something because you've decided to? Rather than because you have to?"
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
bab2acc
|
I don't think they'll ever replace the living and breathing," says Gary. "They said that about e-books," says Kevin. "You can't stop progress."
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
0f1d157
|
It's always an imprudence to step between a man and the reflection of his own cleverness.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
c09efd0
|
You all right?" he said again. I didn't love him, I was far away from him, it was as though I was seeing him through a smeared window or glossy paper; he didn't belong here. But he existed, he deserved to be alive. I was wishing I could tell him how to change so he could get there, the place where I was. "Yes," I said. I touched him on the arm with my hand. My hand touched his arm. Hand touched arm. Language divides us into fragments, I wan..
|
|
love
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
aa9dfae
|
Constance did not have a bun. She didn't need one. She more or less was a bun: neat and contained, and then so tumultuous when unleashed.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
f724de7
|
I wish I knew what You were up to. But whatever it is, help me to get through it, please. Though maybe it's not Your doing; I don't believe for an instant that what's going on out there is what You meant. I have enough daily bread, so I won't waste time on that. It isn't the main problem. The problem is getting it down without choking on it.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
1f9e76b
|
Blessed be those that mourn, for they shall be comforted." Nobody said when."
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
074ec03
|
hard to get the full view, of the sky, of anything. But we can do it, a little at a time, a quick move of the head, up and down, to the side and back. We have learned to see the world in gasps.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
a956547
|
And there is so much time to be endured, time heavy as fried food or thick fog; and then all at once these red events, like explosions, on streets otherwise decorous and matronly and somnambulent. I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it. I've tried to put some of the good things in as well. Flowers, for in..
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
2e34bec
|
In reduced circumstances the desire to live attaches itself to strange objects.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
1655c10
|
There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in ditches or the woods, bludgeoned to death or mutilated, interfered with, as they used to say, but they were about other women, and the men who did such things were other men. None of them were the men we knew.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
0f187df
|
The house, and all the objects in it, crackled with static electricity; undertows washed through it, the air was heavy with things that were known but not spoken. Like a hollow log, a drum, a church, it was amplified, so that conversations whispered in it sixty years ago can be half-heard today.
|
|
drum
whispering
heaviness
electricity
house
home
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
5b511e9
|
Sometimes these flashes of normality come at me from the side, like ambushes. The ordinary, the usual, a reminder, like a kick.
|
|
oridnary
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
69843e9
|
You will flicker in these words and in the words of others for a while and then go out. Even if I send them, you will never get these letters. Even if I see you again, I will never see you again.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
af50c9e
|
Doing their job, said Cora. Keeping us safe. Nothing safer than dead, said Rita, angrily.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
6d4a0aa
|
Orpheus 2 He has been trying to sing Love into existence again And he has failed.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
79c0cc4
|
Gain ten pounds and they put you in Solitary.
|
|
|
Margaret Atwood |