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Margaret Atwood Quotes about Pain

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But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

Margaret Atwood
Pain, Sight, Mind
FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from May 29, 2011

There are some women who seem to be born without fear, just as there are people who are born without the ability to feel pain ... Providence appears to protect such women, maybe out of astonishment.

Margaret Atwood
Pain, Fear, People
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.112, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Men are not to be told anything they might find too painful; the secret depths of human nature, the sordid physicalities, might overwhelm or damage them. For instance, men often faint at the sight of their own blood, to which they are not accustomed. For this reason you should never stand behind one in the line at the Red Cross donor clinic.

Margaret Atwood
Pain, Men, Sight
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.23, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

­Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.

Margaret Atwood
Pain, Writing, Exercise
"Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2010.

I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, than at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish t were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one’s life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow. I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.

Margaret Atwood
Sorry, Pain, Sunset

Anaesthesia, that's one technique: if it hurts, invent a different pain.

Margaret Atwood
Hurt, Pain, Numbness
Margaret Atwood (1987). “The edible woman ; Surfacing ; Lady oracle”, Treasure Press

Never mind. Point being that you don't have to get too worked up about us, dear educated minds. You don't have to think of us aas real girls, real flesh and blood, real pain, real injustice. That might be too upsetting. Just discard the sordid part. Consider us pure symbol. We're no more real than money.

Margaret Atwood
Girl, Pain, Real

There are some women who seem to be born without fear, just as there are people who are born without the ability to feel pain. The painless ones go around putting their hands on hot stoves, freezing their feet to the point of gangrene, scalding the lining of their throats with boiling coffee, because there is no warning anguish. Evolution does not favour them. So too perhaps with the fearless women, because there aren't very many of them around. ... Providence appears to protect such women, maybe out of astonishment.

Margaret Atwood
Pain, Fear, Coffee
Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.112, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

And sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends have been evasive about it, at the time.

Margaret Atwood
Love, Pain, Past
Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.226, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Anyway, maybe there weren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. It never learned, it made the same cretinous mistakes over and over, trading short-term gain for long-term pain.

Margaret Atwood
Pain, Mistake, Long
Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.243, Anchor

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