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16dcf5a
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It's my fault. I am forgetting too much.
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Margaret Atwood |
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54d68f1
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Just do your duty in silence. 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 of spiders. There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.
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Margaret Atwood |
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96698f0
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It's possible to go so far in, so far down and back, they could never get you out.
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Margaret Atwood |
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2cb9fe5
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It's wonderful to hear his voice, even if she can't depend on having any sort of a conversation with him. His interventions tend to be one-sided: if she answers him, he doesn't often answer back. But it was always more or less like that between them.
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Margaret Atwood |
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913b5b6
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Many believed what they were told: that the welfare of the entire kingdom depended on their selflessness.
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welfare
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Margaret Atwood |
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e2b7eef
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A noite cai. Ou caiu a noite. Por que a noite cai, em vez de subir como o raiar do dia? Contudo, se voce olhar para o leste, ao por-do-sol, pode ver a noite subindo, nao caindo; a escuridao se eleva em direcao ao ceu, subindo do horizonte, como um sol negro atras de uma coberta de nuvem. Como fumaca de chamas que nao se ve, uma linha de fogo pouco abaixo do horizonte, um fogo em meio a mata ou uma cidade em chamas. Talvez a noite caia porqu..
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Margaret Atwood |
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1046969
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Florida's not the hick town you keep saying it is," says Reynolds. "Times have changed; they've got good universities now and a great book festival! Thousands of people come to it!"
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Margaret Atwood |
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3e83e74
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I should have married Constance," he says. That's his ace: plonk! Right down on the table. Those five words are usually very effective: he might score a barrage of hostility, and maybe even some tears."
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Margaret Atwood |
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3239546
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he hasn't yet taken to crapping on the carpet and destroying the furniture and whining for meals, but close.
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Margaret Atwood |
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a15c2bf
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However she tried to hide it, she resented me, of course. There's only so long you can feel sorry for a person before you come to feel that their affliction is an act of malice committed by them against you.
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Margaret Atwood |
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bb44bfc
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nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from.
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Margaret Atwood |
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a0bc61b
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As with so much else, she was convinced that an exception would be made in her case.
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Margaret Atwood |
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f26b425
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Rezabamos por la vacuidad, para hacernos dignas de ser llenadas: de gracia, de amor, de abnegacion, de semen y de ninos. Oh, Dios, Rey del universo, gracias por no haberme hecho hombre. Oh, Dios, destruyeme. Hazme fertil. Mortifica mi carne para que pueda multiplicarme. Permite que me realice...
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Margaret Atwood |
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b967436
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Rennie can see what she is now: she's an object of negotiation. The truth about knights comes suddenly clear: the maidens were only an excuse. The dragon was the real business. So much for vacation romances, she thinks. A kiss is just a kiss, Jocasta would say, and you're lucky if you don't get trenchmouth.
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Margaret Atwood |
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695c68d
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What would that be like - to long, to yearn for someone who is right there before your eyes, day in and day out?
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Margaret Atwood |
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f372d3d
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What were prizes but one more level of control imposed on Art by the establishment?
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prizes
establishment
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Margaret Atwood |
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55162af
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Does she ever see him watching her through the picture window? Most likely. Does she think he's a lecherous old man? Very probably. But he isn't exactly that. How to convey the mix of longing, wistfulness, and muted regret that he feels? His regret is that he isn't a lecherous old man, but he wishes he were. He wishes he still could be.
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old-man
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Margaret Atwood |
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8ebd34d
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Nor does she attend conventions any more: she's seen enough kids dressed up like vampires and bunnies and , and especially like the nastier villains of Alphinland. She really can't bear one more inept impersonation of Milzreth of the Red Hand - yet another apple-cheeked innocent in quest of his inner wickedness.
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star-trek
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Margaret Atwood |
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754b2e8
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while he himself puts them on, like a sock over a foot, onto the stub of himself, his extra, sensitive thumb, his tentacle, his delicate, stalked slug's eye, which extrudes, expands, winces, and shrivels back into himself when touched wrongly, grows big again, bulging a little at the tip, traveling forward as if along a leaf, into them, avid for vision.
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Margaret Atwood |
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78bc329
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By contrast, no one in Alphinland ever demanded a blowjob. But then, no one in Alphinland had a toilet either. Toilets weren't necessary. Why waste time on that kind of routine bodily function when there were giant scorpions invading the castle?
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bodily-function
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Margaret Atwood |
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da3736f
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You say, Do you / love me, do you love me / I answer you: / I stretch your arms out / one to either side, / your head slumps forward.
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Margaret Atwood |
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c565e61
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this could be a college guest room, for the less distinguished visitors; or a room in a rooming house, of former times, for ladies in reduced circumstances. That is what we are now. The circumstances have been reduced; for those of us who still have circumstances.
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Margaret Atwood |
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0b07bdd
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Jack quit his advertising job and devoted himself to the life of the pen. Or rather, to the life of the Remington, soon to be replaced with an IBM Selectric, with the bouncing ball that let you change the typeface. Now that was cool!
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Margaret Atwood |
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deed697
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yeah, it was, like, seminal, but tame by today's standards. Violet, for instance, did not get her intestines ripped out. There wasn't any torture, nobody's liver got fried in a pan, there wasn't any gang rape. So what's the fun of that?
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standards
torture
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Margaret Atwood |
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68d87be
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T]he mothers who had sold their children felt empty and sad. They felt as if this act, done freely by themselves (no one had forced them, no one had threatened them) had not been performed willingly. They felt cheated as well, as if the price had been too low. Why hadn't they demanded more? And yet, the mothers told themselves, they'd had no choice.
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Margaret Atwood |
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da57405
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Everything in his life was temporary, ungrounded. Language itself had lost its solidity; it had become thin, contingent, slippery, a viscid film on which he was sliding around like an eyeball on a plate. An eyeball that could still see, however. That was the trouble.
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Margaret Atwood |
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da195e2
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H]aving a money value was no substitute for love.
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love
truth
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Margaret Atwood |
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bebdd53
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Falling in love, I said. Falling into it, we all did then, one way or another. How could we have made such light of it? Sneered even. As if it was trivial for us, a frill, whim. It was, on the contrary, heavy going.
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Margaret Atwood |
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fb8f8e5
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there goes this day, down to where all the other days have gone, each one carrying something away with it.
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Margaret Atwood |
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70af45f
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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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fear
self-conciousness
sad-but-true
human-condition
powerful
longing
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Margaret Atwood |
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597b096
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Take what the moment offers. Don't close doors. Be thankful.
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Margaret Atwood |
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7511d8c
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Maybe night falls because it's heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes.
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Margaret Atwood |
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ce82379
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The things I believe can't all be true, though one of them must be. But I believe all of them, all three versions of Luke, at once and the same time. This contradictory way of believing seems to me, right now, the only way I can believe anything. Whatever the truth is, I will be ready for it.
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Margaret Atwood |
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4eddd65
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Ignorieren ist nicht das gleiche wie Ignoranz, man muss etwas dazu tun.
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Margaret Atwood |
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1bfe623
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I walk to the corner and wait. I used to be bad at waiting. They also serve who only stand and wait, said Aunt Lydia. She made us memorize it. She also said, Not all of you will make it through. Some of you will fall on dry ground or thorns. Some of you are shallow-rooted. She had a mole on her chin that went up and down while she talked. She said, Think of yourselves as seeds, and right then her voice was wheedling, conspiratorial, like th..
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Margaret Atwood |
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a73e2ef
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Possibly, then, writing has to do with darkness, and a desire or perhaps a compulsion to enter it, and, with luck, to illuminate it, and to bring something back out to the light.
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Margaret Atwood |
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c35658d
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What he wants is intimacy, but I can't give him that.
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Margaret Atwood |
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9b98bed
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But also I'm hungry. This is monstrous, but nevertheless it's true. Death makes me hungry. Maybe it's because I've been emptied; or maybe it's the body's way of seeing to it that I remain alive, continue to repeat its bedrock prayer: I am, I am. I am, still. I want to go to bed, make love, right now. I think of the word relish. I could eat a horse.
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Margaret Atwood |
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31e403f
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The summer dresses are unpacked and hanging in the closet, two of them, pure cotton, which is better than synthetics like the cheaper ones, though even so, when it's muggy, in July and August, you sweat inside them. No worry about sunburn though, said Aunt Lydia. The spectacles women used to make of themselves. Oiling themselves like roast meat on a spit, and bare backs and shoulders, on the street, in public, and legs, not even stockings o..
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the-handmaid-s-tale
narcissism
gender-roles
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Margaret Atwood |
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448d3f5
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Is that how we lived, then? But we lived as usual. Everyone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual. Even this is as usual, now. We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in ditches or the woods, bludgeoned t..
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Margaret Atwood |
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a4e5c04
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A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the center of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier, once. They've removed anything you could tie a rope to.
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Margaret Atwood |
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c5bf41d
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Why do you want to talk about ugly things?" she said. ... "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 looking only at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy. It's not good for you." She would never tell him. Why did this drive him so crazy? "It wasn't real sex was it?" he asked. "In the movies. It was only acting. Wasn't it?" "But Jimmy, you should know. All sex is ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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d9a1383
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Not a dandelion in sight here, the lawns are picked clean. I long for one, just one, rubbishy and insolently random and hard to get rid of and perennially yellow as the sun. Cheerful and plebeian, shining for all alike. Rings, we would make from them, and crowns and necklaces, stains from the bitter milk on our fingers. Or I'd hold one under her chin: Do you like butter? Smelling them, she'd get pollen on her nose. Or was that buttercups? O..
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Margaret Atwood |
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e9da264
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Pen Is Envy, Aunt Lydia would say, quoting another Center motto, warning us away from such objects. And they were right, it is envy. Just holding it is envy. I envy the Commander his pen. It's one more thing I would like to steal. The
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Margaret Atwood |