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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 25

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He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever.

He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever.

Margaret Atwood
Cutting, Forever, Throat
Margaret Atwood (2000). “The Blind Assassin”, Random House Large Print Publishing

In his student days, he used to argue that if a woman has no other course open to her but starvation, prostitution, or throwing herself from a bridge, then surely the prostitute, who has shown the most tenacious instinct for self-preservation, should be considered stronger and saner than her frailer and no longer living sisters. One couldn't have it both ways, he'd pointed out: if women are seduced and abandoned they're supposed to go mad, but if they survive, and seduce in their turn, then they were mad to begin with.

Margaret Atwood
Self, Bridges, Mad
Margaret Atwood (2011). “Alias Grace: A Novel”, Anchor

Blondes are like white mice, you only find them in cages. They wouldn’t last long in nature. They’re too conspicuous.

Margaret Atwood
White, Long, Cages
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.106, Anchor

Madness is only an amplification of what you already are.

Margaret Atwood
Amplification, Madness
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Surfacing”, p.158, Simon and Schuster

Of course (said Oryx), having a money value was no substitute for love. Every child should have love, every person should have it. . . . but love was undependable, it came and then it went, so it was good to have a money value, because then at least those who wanted to make a profit from you would make sure you were fed enough and not damaged too much. Also there were many who had neither love nor a money value, and having one of these things was better than having nothing.

Margaret Atwood
Children, Should Have, Too Much

The temptation is to stay inside; to subside into the kind of recluse whom neighborhood children regard with derision and little awe; to let the hedges and weeds grow up, to allow the doors to rust shut, to lie on my bed in some gown-shaped garment and let my hair lengthens and spread out over the pillow and my fingernails to sprout into claws, while candle wax drips onto the carpet. But long ago I made a choice between classicism and romanticism. I prefer to be upright and contained—an urn in daylight.

Margaret Atwood
Weed, Children, Growing Up

I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.

Margaret Atwood
Real, Believe, Needs
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.39, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The act of making a photograph is less a question of what is being looked at than how.

Margaret Atwood
Photography, Photograph

Yelling is a form of publishing

Margaret Atwood
Business, Yelling, Management

I sometimes felt as if these marks on my body were a kind of code, which blossomed, then faded, like invisible ink held to a candle. But if they were a code, who held the key to it? I was sand, I was snow — written on, rewritten, smoothed over.

Margaret Atwood
Keys, Snow, Invisible Ink
"The Blind Assassin". Book by Margaret Atwood, September 2, 2000.

Maybe that's what love is, I thought: it's being pissed off.

Margaret Atwood
Love Is, Pissed Off
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Year of the Flood”, p.304, Anchor

Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I'll be dead,' you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar.

Margaret Atwood
Ideas, People, Soul

This has been her problem all her life: picturing other people's responses. She's too good at it. She can picture the response of anyone--other people's reactions, their emotions, their criticisms, their demands--but somehow they don't reciprocate. Maybe they can't. Maybe they lack the gift, if it is one.

Margaret Atwood
People, Criticism, Demand
Margaret Atwood (2011). “The Robber Bride”, p.84, Anchor

...how much needless despair has been caused by a series of biological mismatches, a misalignment of the hormones and pheromones? Resulting in the fact that the one you love so passionately won't or can't love you. As a species we're pathetic that way: imperfectly monogamous.

Margaret Atwood
Love You, Despair, Pheromones
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.166, Anchor

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
Too Much, Fool, Greedy
Margaret Atwood (1988). “Cat's eye”, Doubleday, 1989

I feel like the word shatter.

Margaret Atwood
Feels
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.103, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I could see how you could do extreme things for the person you loved. Adam One said that when you loved a person, that love might not always get returned the way you wanted, but it was a good thing anyway because love went out all around you like an energy wave, and a creature you didn't know would be helped by it.

Margaret Atwood
Energy, Would Be, Might

I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.

Margaret Atwood
Years, I've Learned, Avoiding

Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.

Margaret Atwood
Irises, Clamor, Handmaids Tale
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.153, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.

Margaret Atwood
Book, Lovers, Said
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.315, Anchor

Not real can tell us about real.

Margaret Atwood
Real
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.102, Anchor

So this was the rest of his life. It felt like a party to which he'd been invited, but at an address he couldn't actually locate. Someone must be having fun at it, this life of his; only, right at the moment, it wasn't him.

Margaret Atwood
Fun, Party, Addresses
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.252, Anchor

Perhaps they were looking for passion; perhaps they delved into this book as into a mysterious parcel - a gift box at the bottom of which, hidden in layers of rustling tissue paper, lay something they'd always longed for but couldn't ever grasp.

Margaret Atwood
Book, Passion, Tissue Paper
Margaret Atwood (2000). “The Blind Assassin”, Random House Large Print Publishing

Kill what you can't save what you can't eat throw out what you can't throw out bury What you can't bury give away what you can't give away you must carry with you, it is always heavier than you thought.

Margaret Atwood
Giving
Margaret Atwood (1987). “Selected Poems, 1965-1975”, p.180, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Time is not a thing that passes ... it's a sea on which you float.

Margaret Atwood
Time, Sea, Floats

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