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11ecae9
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These words are yours, though you never said them, you never heard them, history breeds death but if you kill it you kill yourself.
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Margaret Atwood |
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4fd31be
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Is it disapproval or extreme lust? Toby wonders. With some men it's hard to tell the difference.
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Margaret Atwood |
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14068ac
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You read and read the material and after you've read the twentieth article you can't make any sense out of it anymore, and then you start thinking about the number of books that are published in any given year, in any given month, in any given week, and that's just too much. Words,' he said, looking in my direction finally but with his eyes strangely unfocussed, as though he was really looking at a point several inches beneath my skin, 'are..
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Margaret Atwood |
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9439b7a
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What will Ofwarren give birth to? A baby, as we all hope? Or something else, an Unbaby, with a pinhead or a snout like a dog's, or two bodies, or a hole in its heart or no arms, or webbed hands and feet? There's no telling. They could tell once, with machines, but that is now outlawed. What would be the point of knowing, anyway? You can't have them taken out; whatever it is must be carried to term.
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Margaret Atwood |
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2c13fcf
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But I'm ravenous for news, any kind of news; even if it's false news, it must mean something. We
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Margaret Atwood |
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99df341
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There remains a mirror, on the hall wall. If I turn my head so that the white wings framing my face direct my vision towards it, I can see it as I go down the stairs, round, convex, a pier-glass, like the eye of a fish, and myself in it like a distorted shadow, a parody of something, some fairytale figure in a red cloak, descending towards a moment of carelessness that is the same as danger. A Sister, dipped in blood.
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Margaret Atwood |
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68ec067
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Screw poetry, it's you I want, your taste, rain on you, mouth on your skin.
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Margaret Atwood |
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10580b0
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Could it be he was feeling a certain nostalgia for the war, despite its stench and meaningless carnage? For that questionless life of instinct?
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Margaret Atwood |
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1e0284a
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Moira had power now, she'd been set loose, she'd set herself loose. She was now a loose woman. I think we found this frightening.
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loose-women
power
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Margaret Atwood |
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df1127b
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But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning.
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Margaret Atwood |
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8468a1f
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Everything is post these days, as is we're all just a footnote to something earlier that was real enough to have a name of its own.
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Margaret Atwood |
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1ab0503
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All this will happen because people have neglected the basic lessons of Science, they have gone in for politics and religion and wars instead, and sought out passionate excuses for killing one another. Science on the other hand is dispassionate and without bias, it is the only universal language. The language is numbers. When at last we are up to our ears in death and garbage, we will look to Science to clean up our mess.
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war
politics
religion
science
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Margaret Atwood |
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f5e815e
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Letting yourself go is an alarming notion; it is said of older women who become frowzy and fat, and of things that are sold cheap. Of course there is something to it. I am letting myself go.
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Margaret Atwood |
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79b751d
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He has something we don't have, he has the word.
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Margaret Atwood |
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cc03a88
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There are no lawyers anymore, and the university is closed.
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Margaret Atwood |
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80d7f41
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I am in love with his need
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Margaret Atwood |
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2dc2e5e
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Yes, good, kind Crake. I will stop telling this story if you sing. Because it makes me forget what I am telling.
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Margaret Atwood |
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e6d4f3f
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He just tarted up his misdemeanours and made them look respectable,
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Margaret Atwood |
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e13f2fd
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It disturbs me that he can remember some of these things about himself, but not others; that the things he's lost or misplaced exist now only for me. If he's forgotten so much, what have I forgotten?
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Margaret Atwood |
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f674edf
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I need to feel physical pain, to attach myself to daily life.
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Margaret Atwood |
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f16e2ec
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He was entitled to his own versions, his own conjurings. as I am. I may have served his ends, but he served mine as well.
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Margaret Atwood |
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306c603
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Everyone's too sad for everything.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ee626bd
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Buttered, I lie on my single bed, flat, like a piece of toast. I
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Margaret Atwood |
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7b4a372
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I would like to say my hair turned white overnight, but it didn't. Instead it was my heart: bleached out like meat in water
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Margaret Atwood |
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b8d89ba
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Hell we can make for ourselves.
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Margaret Atwood |
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d89b33a
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It was the feet they'd do, for a first offense. They used steel cables, frayed at the ends. After
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Margaret Atwood |
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6cedae7
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As for you, she'd say to me, you're just a backlash. Flash in the pan. History will absolve me. But
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Margaret Atwood |
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8552192
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That was the trouble with Blood and Roses: it was easier to remember the Blood stuff. The other trouble was that the Blood player usually won, but winning meant you inherited a wasteland. This
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Margaret Atwood |
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e0a5242
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No, you will not be cooked on a fire when you die. Because you are not a fish.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3643ea4
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A movie about the past is not the same as the past.
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Margaret Atwood |
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a44aab5
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It's Janine, telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion. She told the same story last week. She seemed almost proud of it, while she was telling. It may not even be true. At Testifying, it's safer to make things up than to say you have nothing to reveal. But since it's Janine, it's probably more or less true. But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up one plump finger. Her fault, her fault, her fault, we ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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a103f54
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I wish to show you the darkness you are so afraid of. Trust me. This darkness is a place you can enter and be as safe in as you are anywhere; you can put one foot in front of the other and believe the sides of your eyes. Memorize it. You will know it again in your own time. When the appearances of things have left you, you will still have this darkness. Something of your own you can carry with you.
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Margaret Atwood |
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93b6ada
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stringing up rival kings on trees, rejoicing in piles of heads - there was an element of childish glee in all of that.
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Margaret Atwood |
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9009266
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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. You must cultivate poverty of spirit. Blessed are the meek. She didn't go on to say anything about inheriting the earth. I
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Margaret Atwood |
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29d670a
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It would make me feel that I have power. But such a feeling would be an illusion, and too risky.
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Margaret Atwood |
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81f0f0b
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Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it's game over forever.
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Margaret Atwood |
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c27ee34
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On the other hand, she had an uncanny resistance to physical pain: if she burnt her mouth or cut herself, as a rule she didn't cry. It was ill will, the ill will of the universe, that distressed her.
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Margaret Atwood |
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df17a41
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Why is it we want so badly to memorialize 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 can ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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c3e311e
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a good portion of the women in the Asylum were no madder than the Queen of England. Many were sane enough when sober, as their madness came out of a bottle, which is a kind I knew very well. One of them was in there to get away from her husband, who beat her black and blue, he was the mad one but nobody would lock him up; and another said she went mad in the autumns, as she had no house and it was warm in the Asylum, and if she didn't do a ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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5de2038
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Children believe that everything bad that happens is somehow their fault.
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Margaret Atwood |
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7b427fe
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from under the ground, from under the waters, they clutch at us, they clutch at us, we won't let go.
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grief
loss
poetry
dreams
poetic
dreaming
grieving
nightmares
nightmare
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Margaret Atwood |
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afed24c
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Unlike Laura, I have never had the courage of my convictions.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3c94d45
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I could spell it," I say. "Write it down." He hesitates at this novel idea. Possibly he doesn't remember I can. I've never held a pen or a pencil, in this room, not even to add up the scores. Women can't add, he once said, jokingly. When I asked him what he meant, he said, For them, one and one and one and one don't make four. What"
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Margaret Atwood |
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e4be5e3
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The penalty for rape, as you know, is death. Deuteronomy 22:23-29. I
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Margaret Atwood |