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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 82e23df | All that wasted time, and he didn't even know who'd wasted it. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 95c066b | All those paintings of women, in art galleries, surprised at private moments. Nymph Sleeping. Susanna and the Elders. Woman bathing, one foot in a tin tub - Renoir, or was it Degas? both, both women plump. Diana and her maidens, a moment before they catch the hunter's prying eyes. Never any paintings called Man Washing Socks in Sink.) | Margaret Atwood | ||
| d99bc03 | A sad pretty girl inspires the urge to console, unlike a sad old crone. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 410374b | So we couldn't mingle with them, but we could eavesdrop. We got our knowledge that way--we caught it like germs. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 4a26589 | the hearts gone bubonic with jealousy and greed, glinting through the vests and sweaters of anyone at all. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| f746f46 | For if the world treats you well, Sir, you come to believe you are deserving of it. Mary | Margaret Atwood | ||
| d1508ac | A Sister, dipped in blood | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 249a6d9 | I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, then at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish it were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one's life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 3ea25df | She was an infallible prophetess, and these powers came from her ability to look into the patterns of the universe. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 812f900 | The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 2ac6b78 | But I'm ravenous for news, any kind of news; even if it's false news, it must mean something. | false-news news | Margaret Atwood | |
| d978fde | In those timeless years between infancy and, say, seven what is has always been: in that way children inhabit the realm of myth. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 49812ca | I love you. You're the only one." She isn't the first woman he's ever said that to. He shouldn't have used it up so much earlier in his life, he shouldn't have treated it like a tool, a wedge, a key to open women. By the time he got around to meaning it, the words had sounded fraudulent to him and he'd been ashamed to pronounce them." | Margaret Atwood | ||
| aba41e7 | Things, the word she used when whatever it stood for was too distasteful or filthy or horrible to pass her lips. A successful life for her was one that avoided things, excluded things. Such things do not happen to nice women. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 653a862 | You don't take a hammer - not to mention an electric screwdriver and a pipe wrench - to a guy's computer without being quite angry. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 584b0b4 | Think of yourselves as pearls. We, sitting in our rows, eyes down, we make her salivate morally. We are hers to define, we must suffer her adjectives. I think about pearls. Pearls are congealed oyster spit. | rational witty | Margaret Atwood | |
| acfdad0 | Then there's the two of us. This word is far too short for us, it has only four letters, too sparse to fill those deep bare vacuums between the stars that press on us with their deafness. It's not love we don't wish to fall into, but that fear. This word is not enough but it will have to do. It's a single vowel in this metallic silence, a mouth that says O again and again in wonder and pain, a breath, a finger grip on a cliffside. You can h.. | poetry | Margaret Atwood | |
| 7f0c52c | I wonder why trying to transcend time never even succeeds in stopping it... | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 259bc33 | A return to traditional values. Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want? | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 6a74cfc | I know I was alright on Friday when I got up; if anything I was feeling more stolid than usual. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 9be9bc4 | Also I could hear Amanda's voice: Why are you being so weak? Love's never a fair trade. So Jimmy's tired of you, so what, there's guys all over the place like germs, and you can pick them like flowers and toss them away when they're wilted. But you have to act like you're having a spectacular time and every day's a party. | flowers germs jimmy love party ren | Margaret Atwood | |
| eddc9bd | But I envy the Commander's Wife her knitting. It's good to have small goals that can be easily attained. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| f2473ae | Symbolic thinking of any kind would signal downfall, in Crake's view. Next they'd be inventing idols, and funerals, and grave goods, and the afterlife, and sin, and Linear B, and kings, and then slavery and war. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 26f2eaa | He's a young man, my own age or a little older, which is young for a man although not for a woman, | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 3f162d7 | Why is war so much like a practical joke? she thinks. Hiding behind bushes, leaping out, with not much difference between Boo! and Bang! except the blood. The loser falls over with a scream, followed with a foolish expression, mouth agape, eyes akimbo. Those old biblical kings, setting their feet on conquered necks, stringing up rival kings on trees, rejoicing in piles of heads - there was an element of childish glee in all of that. Maybe i.. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| e3080c7 | Did I really wear bathing suits, at the beach? I did, without thought, among men, without caring that my legs, my arms, my thighs and back were on display, could be seen. Shameful, immodest. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| b392666 | I walk away from her, guilt on my hands, absolving myself: I'm a good person. She could have been dying. No one else stopped. I'm a fool, to confuse this with goodness. I am not good. I know too much to be good. I know myself. I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly | Margaret Atwood | ||
| ad1a4bc | God be with you is not an unmixed blessing. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 13e4f2d | I bet it's your mouldy socks," said Jimmy. "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten these little socks." | socks | Margaret Atwood | |
| c76a333 | We dangle by a flimsy thread, Our little lives are grains of sand: The Cosmos is a tiny sphere Held in the hollow of God's hand. Give up your anger and your spite, And imitate the Deer, the Tree; In sweet Forgiveness find your joy, For it alone can set you free. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| b36ec51 | I know more about my father than I used to know: I know he wanted to be a pilot in the war but could not, because the work he did was considered essential to the war effort... I know he grew up on a farm in the backwoods of Nova Scotia, where they didn't have running water or electricity. This is why he can build things and chop things... He did his high school courses by correspondence, sitting at the kitchen table and studying by the ligh.. | family growing-up parents | Margaret Atwood | |
| deaa384 | Perhaps he was merely being friendly. Perhaps he saw the look on my face and mistook it for something else. Really what I wanted was the cigarette. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 712fc6d | he was the kind of boy for whom cleverness was female. | cleverness margaret-atwood | Margaret Atwood | |
| 01a28c2 | to fix and make plausible, the nebulous emotions of my costumed heroins, like diamonds on a sea of dough. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 5dd0ebe | I feel angry. I'm not proud of myself for this, or for any of it. But then, that's the point. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 6426b35 | But they had a money value: they represented a cash profit to others. They must have sensed that--sensed that they were worth something. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| d601e36 | I see what he's after. He is a collector. He thinks all he has to do is give me an apple, and then he can collect me. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 7608d06 | Where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia said, who is in love with either/or. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| f8bf840 | In ten years, you'll be on a stamp / where anyone at all can lick you. | success | Margaret Atwood | |
| e73e1ed | It is very odd to be standing in a locked room in the Penitentiary, speaking with a strange man about France and Italy and Germany. A travelling man. He must be a wanderer, like Jeremiah the peddler. But Jeremiah travelled to earn his bread, and these other sorts of men are rich enough already. They go on voyages because they are curious. They amble around the world and stare at things, they sail across the oceans as if there's nothing to i.. | traveling | Margaret Atwood | |
| 08a3a8e | Today I speak to my bones as I would speak to a dog. I want to go up the stairs, I tell them. Up, up, up, with one leg dragging. Is the ache deep in the bones, this elusive pain? Does that mean it will rain? Good bones, bones, I coax, wondering how to reward them; if they will sit up for me, beg, roll over, do one more trick, once more. There. We're at the top. bones! Good ! Keep on going. | bones | Margaret Atwood | |
| e3e701c | How much longer can I be so fucking cute? | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 9d3c908 | a few brown leaves are stuck to the outside of the glass like leather tongues. | Margaret Atwood | ||
| 18ccfb6 | her body feels different, no longer taut and sinewy but sponge-like fluid. Saturated. It has a different energy, a deep orangy-like pink, like the inside of a hibiscus. | Margaret Atwood |