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038ba06
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I forgave her, of course. I always did; I had to, because there were only the two of us. The two of us on our thorn-encircled island, waiting for rescue; and, on the mainland, everyone else.
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Margaret Atwood |
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7b8ce11
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Being socially retarded is like being mentally retarded, it arouses in others disgust and pity and the desire to torment and reform.
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Margaret Atwood |
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f42d70b
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The shroud itself became a story almost instantly. 'Penelope's web', it was called; people used to say that of any task that remained mysteriously unfinished. I did not appreciate the term web. If the shroud was a web, then I was a spider. But I had not been attempting to catch men like flies: on the contrary, I'd merely been trying to avoid entanglement myself.
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Margaret Atwood |
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f534d55
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Death is much too high a price to pay for the satisfaction of curiosity, needless to say.
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Margaret Atwood |
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1df4a25
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God is a cluster of neurons.
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science
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Margaret Atwood |
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aced801
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I remember a television program I once saw [...] I must have been seven or eight, too young to understand it. It was the sort of thing my mother liked to watch: historical, educational. She tried to explain it to me afterwards, to tell me that the things in it had really happened, but to me it was only a story. I thought someone had made it up. I suppose all children think that, about any history before their own. If it's only a story, it b..
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Margaret Atwood |
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6369d45
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Eating fire is your ambition: to swallow the flame down take it into your mouth and shoot it forth, a shout or an incandescent tongue, a word exploding from you in gold, crimson, unrolling in a brilliant scroll To be lit up from within vein by vein To be the sun
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Margaret Atwood |
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74708c9
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As Charles Darwin said,'The economy shown by Nature in her resources is striking,'' says the Spirit. 'All wealth comes from Nature. Without it, there wouldn't be any economics. The primary wealth is food, not money. Therefore anything that concerns the handling of the land also concerns me.
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money
wealth
nature
debt
food
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Margaret Atwood |
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2ce9785
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But something had shifted, some balance. I felt shrunken, so that when he put his arms around me, gathering me up, I was as small as a doll. I felt love going forward without me.
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Margaret Atwood |
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cafde12
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I didn't much like it, this grudge-holding against the past.
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letting-go
past
moving-forward
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Margaret Atwood |
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e11ff45
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Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and can be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.
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Margaret Atwood |
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5f9f06d
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The willow is full plumage and is no help, with its insinuating whispers. Rendevous, it says. Terraces; the sibilants run up my spine, a shiver as if in fever. The summer dress rustles against the flesh of my thighs, the grass grows underfoot, at the edges of my eyes there are movements, in the branches; feathers, flittings, grace notes, tree into bird, metamorphosis run wild. Goddesses are possible now and the air suffuses with desire... W..
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Margaret Atwood |
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255a2aa
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Wild geese fly south, creaking like anguished hinges; along the riverbank the candles of the sumacs burn dull red. It's the first week of October. Season of woolen garments taken out of mothballs; of nocturnal mists and dew and slippery front steps, and late-blooming slugs; of snapdragons having one last fling; of those frilly ornamental pink-and-purple cabbages that never used to exist, but are all over everywhere now.
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Margaret Atwood |
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9b3c7fe
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And yes, I know it's you; and that is what we will come to, sooner or later, when it's even darker than It is now, when the snow is colder, when it's darkest and coldest and candles are no longer any use to us
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Margaret Atwood |
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54cbbe3
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From any rational point of view I am absurd; but there are no longer any rational points of view.
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Margaret Atwood |
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551dbee
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What people want is perfection," said the man. "In themselves." "But they need the steps to it to be pointed out," said the woman. "In a simple order," said the man. "With encouragement," said the woman. "And a positive attitude."
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Margaret Atwood |
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72f1624
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Also she went in for culture, which gave her a certain moral authority. It wouldn't now; but people believed, then, that culture could make you better - a better person. They believed it could uplift you, or the women believed it. They hadn't yet seen Hitler at the opera house.
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hitler
culture
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Margaret Atwood |
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37a3595
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Women, and what went on under their collars. Hotness and coldness, coming and going in the strange musky flowery variable-weather country inside their clothes -- mysterious, important, uncontrollable. That was his father's take on things. But men's body temperatures were never dealt with; they were never even mentioned....
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Margaret Atwood |
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6f6b362
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Forced to chose between one irascible tyrant and another, Laura had chosen the one which was greater, and also further away.
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lethal
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Margaret Atwood |
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e8971d8
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Every time the women appear, Snowman is astonished all over again. They're every known colour from the deepest black to whitest white, they're various heights, but each one of them is admirably proportioned. Each is sound of tooth, smooth of skin. No ripples of fat around their waists, no bulges, no dimpled orange-skin cellulite on their thighs. No body hair, no bushiness. They look like retouched fashion photos, or ads for a high priced wo..
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Margaret Atwood |
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e6fe0d2
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What is toast?" says Snowman to himself, once they've run off. Toast is when you take a piece of bread - What is bread? Bread is when you take some flour - What is flour? We'll skip that part, it's too complicated. Bread is something you can eat, made from a ground-up plant and shaped like a stone. You cook it . . . Please, why do you cook it? Why don't you just eat the plant? Never mind that part - Pay attention. You cook it, and then you ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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c065bd1
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Blondes are like white mice, you only find them in cages. They wouldn't last long in nature. They're too conspicuous.
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Margaret Atwood |
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8097013
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It isn't chic for women to be drunk. Men drunks are more excusable, more easily absolved, but why? It must be thought they have better reasons.
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men
women
double-standards
gender
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Margaret Atwood |
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fb3b176
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There were still newspapers, then. We used to read them in bed. It's French, he said. From . Help Me.
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Margaret Atwood |
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43684b4
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with shrunken fingers we ate our oranges and bread, shivering in the parked car; though we know we had never been there before, we knew we had been there before.
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poetry
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Margaret Atwood |
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46e790b
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Most of us will. We'll choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is not our only motive: love or grief or despair or hatred is what drives us on. We'll spy relentlessly on the dead: we'll open their letters, we'll read their journals, we'll go through their trash, hoping for a hint, a final word, an explanation, from those who have deserted us--..
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writing
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Margaret Atwood |
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8ae4526
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The bell that measures time is ringing
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Margaret Atwood |
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9934bed
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The memos that came from above telling him he'd done a good job meant nothing to him because they'd been dictated by semi-literates; all they proved was that no one at AnooYou was capable of appreciating how clever he had been. He came to understand why serial killers sent helpful clues to the police.
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Margaret Atwood |
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e925ced
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Don't blame me, blame history, he says, smiling. Such things happen. Falling in love has been recorded, or at least those words have.
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Margaret Atwood |
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afe2d4e
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I wasn't even sure I wanted a man in my life again; by that time I'd exhausted the notion that the answer to a man is another man, and I was out of breath.
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relationships
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Margaret Atwood |
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1e87769
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You're dead, Cordelia.' No I'm not. 'Yes you are. You're dead. Lie down.
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Margaret Atwood |
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f44dc2f
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For the children with their greedy little mouths represent the future, which like time itself will devour all now alive.
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Margaret Atwood |
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f654a64
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I feel despised there, for having so little money; also for once having had so much. I never actually had it, of course. Father had it, and then Richard. But money was imputed to me, the same way crimes are imputed to those who've simply been present at them.
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Margaret Atwood |
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19e5b51
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Time: old cold time, old sorrow, settling down in layers like silt in a pond.
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time
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Margaret Atwood |
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db25b7a
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Language divides us into fragments, I wanted to be whole.
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Margaret Atwood |
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f75ec7a
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Every child should have love, every person should have it. She herself would rather have had her mother's love - the love she still continued to believe in, the love that had followed her through the jungle in the form of a bird so she would not be too frightened or lonely.
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love
sad
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Margaret Atwood |
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9bad692
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If i thought this would never happen again I would die. But this is wrong, nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from.
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love-and-sex
need-of-touch
lack-of-love
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Margaret Atwood |
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eb1ff0c
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What possesses them, these young girls with a talent for self-immolation?
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Margaret Atwood |
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f93251e
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and each of his voices left his body in a different colored soul and floated up towards the sun still singing.
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Margaret Atwood |
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431d394
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Two-thirty comes during Testifying. It's Janine, telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion.But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up one plump finger. Her fault, her fault, her fault. We chant in unison. Who led them on? She did. She did. She did. Why did God allow such a terrible thing to happen? Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson.
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rape
god
abortion-quotes
victim-blaming
dystopia
womens-rights
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Margaret Atwood |
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0c9b955
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Yet each flower, each twig, each pebble, shines as though illuminated from within, as once before, on her first day in the Garden. It's the stress, it's the adrenalin, it's a chemical effect: she knows this well enough. But why is it built in? she thinks. Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy?
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rabbits
mercy
fox
teeth
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Margaret Atwood |
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523e99d
|
And then she began to cry, and when I asked her why she was doing that, she said it was because I was to have a happy ending, and it was just like a book; and I wondered what books she'd been reading.
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life
perspective
happy-endings
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Margaret Atwood |
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170594b
|
She's not extravagant or greedy, she tells herself: all she ever wanted was to be protected by layer upon layer of kind, soft, insulating money, so that nobody and nothing could get close enough to harm her.
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Margaret Atwood |
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16454c2
|
Dead was not an absolute concept to her. Some people were more dead than others, and finally it was a matter of opinion who was dead and who was alive, so it was best not to discuss such a thing.
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life
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Margaret Atwood |