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c4b2abf
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Laura was flint in a nest of thistledown. I say flint, not stone: a flint has a heart of fire.
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Margaret Atwood |
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32bb10a
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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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7340d3d
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Perfection exacts a price, but it's the imperfect who pay it.
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Margaret Atwood |
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0b78da8
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But this is wrong, nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3ecfbfd
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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
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Margaret Atwood |
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3b7c693
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Just remember, dear Friends, What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.
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Margaret Atwood |
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0561bd9
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Anyway, you don't know what's going to happen. I'm only just thickening the plot. --I'd say it was pretty thick already. Thick plots are my specialty. If you want a thinner kind, look elsewhere.
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writing
thick-plot
plot
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Margaret Atwood |
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c293e80
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Everyone believed him of course, but you always knew with Salome that if anyone's head was going to roll it wouldn't be hers.
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Margaret Atwood |
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cbe897c
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Maybe that was the real Bernice, I thought - kind and innocent. Maybe she was truly like that inside, and all the fighting we used to do and all her sharp and unpleasant edges - that was her way of struggling to get out of the hard skin she'd grown all over herself like a beetle shell. But no matter how she hit out and raged, she'd been stuck in there. That thought made me feel so sorry for her that I cried.
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Margaret Atwood |
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372e95b
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Pero quien puede recordar el dolor, una vez que este ha desaparecido? Todo lo que queda de el es una sombra, ni siquiera en la mente ni en la carne. El dolor deja una marca demasiado profunda como para que se vea, una marca que queda fuera del alcance de la vista y de la mente.
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Margaret Atwood |
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8af52ae
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Blessed be those that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Nobody said when.
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Margaret Atwood |
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424830f
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Watch out for the leaders, Crake used to say. First the leaders and the led, then the tyrants and the slaves, then the massacres. That's how it's always gone.
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Margaret Atwood |
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d4f001d
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Last night I felt the approach of nothing. Not too close but on its way, like a wingbeat, like the cooling of the wind, the slight initial tug of an undertow.
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Margaret Atwood |
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86d5731
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The fact is that I hate this city. I've hated it so long I can hardly remember feeling any other way about it.
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memory
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Margaret Atwood |
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6dfcaec
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I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather no shadow unless there is also light.
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shadow
resistance
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Margaret Atwood |
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33e78ce
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You can never see yourself the way you are to someone else - to a man looking at you, from behind, when you don't know - because in a mirror your own head is always cranked around over your shoulder. A coy, inviting pose. You can hold up another mirror to see the back view, but then what you see is what so many painters have loved to paint - Woman Looking In Mirror, said to be an allegory of vanity. Though it is unlikely to be vanity, but t..
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Margaret Atwood |
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b4f7ec7
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On impulse he might die for her, but living for her would be quite different. He has no talent for monotony.
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Margaret Atwood |
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38db28c
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Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything,
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Margaret Atwood |
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b8b9479
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They should all be cheered by it, for isn't it what they want? What we all want: to leave a message behind us that has an effect, if only a dire one: a message that cannot be cancelled out.
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Margaret Atwood |
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0f966b7
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One detaches oneself. One describes.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3b6e61b
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Congratulations on a good outcome! We've all been rooting for you." Charmaine wonders who's been doing the rooting, because she hasn't noticed anyone. But like so many things around here, maybe the rooting has taken place behind the scenes."
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Margaret Atwood |
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0f35573
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He can't shake the feeling that this place is some sort of pyramid scheme, and that those who fail to understand that will be left empty-handed. But there's no obvious reason for this feeling of his. Maybe he's ungrateful by nature.
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Margaret Atwood |
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582746f
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And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.
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Margaret Atwood |
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1158c36
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She had an idea, but it was the wrong idea. It was hardly even an idea, just a white idea balloon with no writing inside it.
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metaphor
margaret-atwood
the-robber-bride
idea
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Margaret Atwood |
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f2df40f
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A breath would blow you away, they beam down at her silently. You wish, thinks Tony, smiling up. Many have blown. She
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Margaret Atwood |
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e022c96
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Chemistry can be like magic. It can be merciless.
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Margaret Atwood |
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1c1d0b4
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I read about that in introduction to Psychology; that, and the chapter on caged rats who'd give themselves electric shocks for something to do And the one on the pigeons, trained to peck a button that made a grain of corn appear. Three groups of them: the first got one grain per peck, the second one grain every other peck, the third was random. When the man in charge cut off the grain, the first group gave up quite soon, the second group a ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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aa25bdb
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Was she in any way like us? thinks Tony. Or, to put it the other way around: Are we in any way like her?
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margaret-atwood
the-robber-bride
similarities
musing
questioning
question
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Margaret Atwood |
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0f0242c
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Actually, they took turns trying to avoid being the victims. That's the whole point about war!
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Margaret Atwood |
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3cf14de
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I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will. I could make it run, push buttons, of one sort or another, make things happen. There were limits but my body was nevertheless lithe, single, solid, one with me. Now the flesh arranges it self differently.
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Margaret Atwood |
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2f31629
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There are days when I can hardly make it out of bed. I find it an effort to speak. I measure progress in steps, the next one and the next one, as far as the bathroom. These steps are major accomplishments. I focus on taking the cap off the toothpaste, getting the brush up to my mouth. I have difficulty lifting my arm to do even that. I feel I am without worth, that nothing I can do is of any value, least of all to myself.
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Margaret Atwood |
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9e18fb5
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Language is not morally neutral because the human brain is not neutral in its desires. Neither is the dog brain. Neither is the bird brain: crows hate owls. We like some things and dislike others, we approve of some things and disapprove of others. Such is the nature of being an organism.
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Margaret Atwood |
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98de66a
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her own marriage had been arranged, would things have turned out any worse than they did? Is it fair, to send inexperienced young girls out into the wild forest to fend for themselves? Girls with big bones and maybe not the smallest of feet. What would help would be a wise woman, some gnarly old crone who would step out from behind a tree, who would give advice, who would say No, not this one, who would say Beauty is only skin deep, in men ..
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Margaret Atwood |
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e4e735e
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Well, they bill by the minute, these lawyers, just like the cheaper whores.
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Margaret Atwood |
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3236311
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I was sand, I was snow - written on, rewritten, smoothed over.
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Margaret Atwood |
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dca8b78
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At some indeterminate point in their life cycles, they cause themselves to be placed in artificial stone or wooden cocoons, or chrysalises. They have an idea that they will someday emerge from these in an altered state, which they symbolize with carvings of themselves with wings. However, we did not observe that any had actually done so.
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death
humourous
human-nature
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Margaret Atwood |
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ab52202
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Surviving
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war
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Margaret Atwood |
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9e6be6c
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He had been with me, but he wasn't with me now, we had been walking along a street like this one and then the future swept over us and we were separated. He was in the distance now, across the ocean, on a beach, the wind ruffling his hair, I could hardly see his features. He was moving at an ever-increasing speed away from me, into the land of the dead, the dead past, irretrievable.
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Margaret Atwood |
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80e1f69
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The freezing rain sifts down, handfuls of shining rice thrown by some unseen celebrant. Wherever it hits, it crystallizes into a granulated coating of ice.
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Margaret Atwood |
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912c909
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Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it.
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Margaret Atwood |
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6805af0
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She breathes in the cold air; pellets of blown ice whip against her face. The wind's getting up, as the TV said it would. Nonetheless there's something brisk about being out in the storm, something energizing: it whisks away the cobwebs, it makes you inhale.
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Margaret Atwood |
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1213b78
|
Sex was a given, like food, and as such was to be relished when excellent and derided when substandard; it was an entertainment, like the theatre, and could thus be reviewed like a performance.
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Margaret Atwood |
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4355c18
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The hair compromise he finally agreed to is a white strip on the left side - geriatric punk, he'd whispered to himself - with, recently, the addition of an arresting scarlet patch. The total image is that of an alarmed skunk trapped in the floodlights after an encounter with a ketchup bottle.
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Margaret Atwood |
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96ce6a0
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What could be done? We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?
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Margaret Atwood |