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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 26

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Some days I do appreciate things more, eggs, flowers, but then I decide I'm only having an attack of sentimentality, my brain going pastel Technicolor, like a beautiful-sunset greeting cards they used to make so many of

Some days I do appreciate things more, eggs, flowers, but then I decide I'm only having an attack of sentimentality, my brain going pastel Technicolor, like a beautiful-sunset greeting cards they used to make so many of in California. High-gloss hearts. The danger is grayout.

Margaret Atwood
Beautiful, Flower, Heart
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.200, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish drying on sand.

Margaret Atwood
Water, Body, Sand
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.105, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering Mine!Mine!

Margaret Atwood
Heart, Familiar, Clutch
Margaret Atwood (2014). “The MaddAddam Trilogy Bundle: The Year of the Flood; Oryx & Crake; MaddAddam”, p.742, Anchor

Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.

Margaret Atwood
Fate, Romance, Luck
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.270, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Nature full strength is more than we can take, Adam One used to say. It's a potent hallucinogen, a soporific, for the untrained Soul. We're no longer at home in it. We need to dilute it. We can't drink it straight. And God is the same. Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered.

Margaret Atwood
Home, Soul, Needs
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Year of the Flood”, p.326, Anchor

He’d developed a strangely tender feeling towards such words, as if they were children abandoned in the woods and it was his duty to rescue them.

Margaret Atwood
Children, Feelings, Woods

What a moron I was to think you were sweet and innocent, when it turns out you were actually college-educated the whole time!

Margaret Atwood
Sweet, College, Thinking
Margaret Atwood (1987). “The edible woman ; Surfacing ; Lady oracle”, Treasure Press

I marvel again at the nakedness of men's lives: the showers right out in the open, the body exposed for inspection and comparison, the public display of privates. What is it for? What purposes of reassurance does it serve? The flashing of a badge, look, everyone, all is in order, I belong here. Why don't women have to prove to one another that they are women? Some form of unbuttoning, some split-crotch routine, just as casual. A doglike sniffing.

Margaret Atwood
Men, Order, Doe

The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives. We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.

Margaret Atwood
Dream, White, Space
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.57, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

When they came to harvest my corpse (open your mouth, close your eyes) cut my body from the rope, surprise, surprise: I was still alive. Tough luck, folks, I know the law: you can't execute me twice for the same thing. How nice. I fell to the clover, breathed it in, and bared my teeth at them in a filthy grin. You can imagine how that went over. Now I only need to look out at them through my sky-blue eyes. They see their own ill will staring then in the forehead and turn tail Before, I was not a witch. But now I am one.

Margaret Atwood
Nice, Eye, Cutting

it's doors I'm afraid of because I can't see through them, its the door opening by itself in the wind I'm afraid of.

Margaret Atwood
Doors, Wind, Because I Can
Margaret Atwood (1987). “The edible woman ; Surfacing ; Lady oracle”, Treasure Press

The Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it's a freshness, a plumpness of the cells, that's unearned and temporary, and that nothing can replicate. None of them was satisfied with it, however; already they were making attempts to alter themselves into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn't blame them, having done the same once myself.

Margaret Atwood
Beautiful, Girl, Cells

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--who've left us holding the bag, which is often a good deal emptier than we'd supposed.

Margaret Atwood
Grief, Flames, Hands

Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave - The water below is as dark as the grave, And maybe you'll sink in your little blue boat - It's hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat

Margaret Atwood
Dark, Blue, Water
Margaret Atwood (2014). “The Penelopiad”, p.38, Faber & Faber

You're dead, Cordelia.' No I'm not. 'Yes you are. You're dead. Lie down.

Margaret Atwood
Lying, Cordelia
Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

...and nostalgia swept through Jimmy like a sudden hunger.

Margaret Atwood
Nostalgia, Hunger, Jimmy

More and more I feel like a letter—deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one.

Margaret Atwood
Letters, Feels
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.169, Anchor

They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing.

Margaret Atwood
Growing Up, School, Years
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.40, Anchor

When they're gone out of his head, these words, they'll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been.

Margaret Atwood
Forever, Gone, Ifs
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.68, Anchor

Why do men feel threatened by women?

Margaret Atwood
Men, Feels, Threatened
Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

Axiom: you are a sea. Your eye- lids curve over chaos My hands where they touch you, create small inhabited islands soon you will be all earth: a known land, a country.

Margaret Atwood
Country, Eye, Islands
Margaret Atwood (1987). “Selected Poems, 1965-1975”, p.78, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I stand on the corner, pretending I am a tree.

Margaret Atwood
Tree, Pretending, Corners
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.19, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

But my dreaming self refuses to be consoled. It continues to wander, aimless, homeless, alone. It cannot be convinced of its safety by any evidence drawn from my waking life.

Margaret Atwood
Dream, Self, Safety
Margaret Atwood (2008). “Moral Disorder and Other Stories”, p.87, Anchor

The prospect of his future life stretched before him like a sentence; not a prison sentence but a long-winded sentence with a lot of unnecessary subordinate clauses, as he was soon in the habit of quipping during Happy Hour pickup time at the local campus bars and pubs. He couldn’t say he was looking forward to it, this rest-of-his-life.

Margaret Atwood
Long, Bars, Looking Forward
Margaret Atwood (2009). “Oryx And Crake”, p.106, Hachette UK

But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion. She renders herself up, is blotted out; enters the darkness of her own body, forgets her name. Immolation is what she wants, however briefly. To exist without boundaries.

Margaret Atwood
Names, Darkness, Use
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.261, Anchor

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