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Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 28

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So Crake never remembered his dreams. It's Snowman that remembers them instead. Worse than remembers: he's immersed in them, he'd wading through them, he's stuck in them. Every moment he's lived in the past few months

So Crake never remembered his dreams. It's Snowman that remembers them instead. Worse than remembers: he's immersed in them, he'd wading through them, he's stuck in them. Every moment he's lived in the past few months was dreamed first by Crake. No wonder Crake screamed so much.

Margaret Atwood
Dream, Past, Months
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.218, Anchor

Things might have been different if she hadn't been able to drift; if she'd had to concentrate on her next meal, instead of dwelling on all the injuries she felt we'd done her. An unearned income encourages self-pity in those already prone to it.

Margaret Atwood
Self, Dwelling, Meals
Margaret Atwood (2000). “The Blind Assassin”, Random House Large Print Publishing

No one knows what cuases an outer landscape to become an inner one.

Margaret Atwood
Landscape, Knows

Those walls and bars are there for a reason,” said Crake. “Not to keep us out, but to keep them in. Mankind needs barriers in both cases.” “Them?” “Nature and God.” “I thought you didn’t believe in God,” said Jimmy. “I don’t believe in Nature either,” said Crake. “Or not with a capital N.

Margaret Atwood
Wall, Believe, Needs
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.206, Anchor

What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.

Margaret Atwood
Crazy, Games, Mind
Margaret Atwood (1989). “The Edible Woman”, New Canadian Library

A fist is more than the sum of its fingers.

Margaret Atwood
Mathematical Logic, Greek, Fists
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.401, Anchor

There is never only one, of anyone

Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood (1988). “Cat's eye”, Doubleday, 1989

I tell, therefore you are.

Margaret Atwood
"The Handmaid's Tale". Book by Margaret Atwood, 1985.

I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart. If you'd wanted the narrative line you should have asked earlier, when I still knew everything and was more than willing to tell. That was before I discovered the virtues of scissors, the virtues of matches.

Margaret Atwood
Mean, Should Have, Together
"The Tent". Book by Margaret Atwood, 2006.

I don't think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It's essentially just a long narrative form. What you use that long narrative form for can be very different.

Margaret Atwood
Reality, Thinking, Play

Money as such is, as Oscar Wilde said, perfectly useless. You can't eat it, drink it, shelter yourself from the cold with it, wear it, or make love with it unless deeply disturbed. In and of itself, it has no emotions, no mind, and no conscience. It doesn't put out flowers or have children, and it makes a lousy pet. It has meaning only when it circulates, and is exchanged for other things; and money doesn't do that for itself. People do that, using money as a symbolic token.

Margaret Atwood
Children, Flower, People

You hear doom and gloom about the Internet ruining young people's command of English - that's nonsense.

Margaret Atwood
Doom And Gloom, People, Internet

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?

Margaret Atwood
Beautiful, Teeth, Rabbits
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Year of the Flood”, p.413, Anchor

The cemetery has ... an inscription: 'Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will Fear No Evil, For Thou Art With Me.' Yes, it does feel deceptively safer with two; but Thou is a slippery character. Every Thou I've known has had a way of going missing.

Margaret Atwood
Art, Character, Two
Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.44, Anchor

Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?

Margaret Atwood
Lines, Too Much, Boundaries
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.206, Anchor

Toast is me. I am toast.

Margaret Atwood
Toasts
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.98, Anchor

Don't eat anything you aren't prepared to kill. Don't kill anything you aren't prepared to eat.

Margaret Atwood
Prepared
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Blind Assassin”, p.80, Hachette UK

Once in a while, Jimmy would make up a word but he never once got caught out. ... He should have been pleased by his success with these verbal fabrications, but instead he was depressed by it. The memos telling him he'd done a good job meant nothing to him; all they proved was that no one was capable of appreciating how clever he had been. He came to understand why serial killers sent helpful clues to the police.

Margaret Atwood
Jobs, Clever, Should Have

This afternoon held that special quality of mournful emptiness I've connected with late Sunday afternoons ever since childhood: the feeling of having nothing to do.

Margaret Atwood
Sunday, Childhood, Feelings
Margaret Atwood (1999). “The Edible Woman”, Emblem Editions

Poetry isn't written from the idea down. It's written from the phrase, line and stanza up, which is different from what your teacher taught you to do in school.

Margaret Atwood
Teacher, School, Ideas

Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee... I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

Margaret Atwood
Fists, Knees, Clue
Margaret Atwood (1987). “The edible woman ; Surfacing ; Lady oracle”, Treasure Press

I define science fiction as fiction in which things happen that are not possible today - that depend, for instance, on advanced space travel, time travel, the discovery of green monsters on other planets or galaxies, or that contain various technologies we have not yet developed.

Margaret Atwood
Technology, Discovery, Space
Margaret Atwood (2006). “Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose: 1983-2005”, p.92, Basic Books

I’m not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don’t know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder.

Margaret Atwood
Girl, Boys, Awkward
Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young.

Margaret Atwood
Compassion, Should Have, Young
Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Year of the Flood”, p.15, Anchor

Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters.

Margaret Atwood
War, Safe, Canada

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