Quotes from Margaret Atwood

I've cut myself off. I can feel the place where I used o be attached. It's raw, as when you grate your finger. It's a shredded mess of images. It hurts. But where exactly on me is this torn-off stem? Now here, now there. Meanwhile the other girl, the one with the memory, is coming nearer and nearer. She's catching up to me, trailing behind her, like red smoke, the rope we share.

There were the garden shears, the knitting needles; the world is full of weapons if you're looking for them. I should have paid attention

He held a knife against her breast, As into his arms she pressed, sang the girl. I could just leave, thought Richard. But he didn't want to do that. Oh Willy Willy, don't you murder me, I'm not prepared for eternity. Sex and violence, he thinks now. A lot of the songs were about that. We didn't even notice. We thought it was art.

I'll make a quick exit. A needleful or two of morphine will do it. Best that way: if I allowed myself to live, I would disgorge too much truth. Torture is like dancing: I'm too old for it. Let the younger ones practise their bravery. Though they may not have a choice about that, since they lack my privileges.

because God could see everything you did and also thought and most of these things annoyed him.

Matter of fact, you would, says Zeb. Heart like shale. What you need is a good fracking.

You can fall in love with anybody — a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules.

Every day a bad-hair day? My hair was driving me crazy, but then Ã¢â'¬Â¦ I died. Don

fuck" is a spirit called upon for guidance in times of need.

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

Occasionally I do cry for no reason, as it says you are supposed to. But I can't believe in my own sadness, I can't take it seriously. I watch myself crying in the mirror, intrigued by the sight of tears.

you occupy me so completely run through my brain as warm chemicals and melted gold, spread out wings to the ends of my fingers reach my heart and stop, digging your claws in

On the other hand, she had an uncanny resistance to physical pain: if she burnt her mouth or cut herself, as a rule she didn't cry. It was ill will, the ill will of the universe, that distressed her.

And once you've got clocks, you've got death and dead people, because time, as we know, runs on, and then it runs out, and dead people are situated outside of time, whereas living people are still immersed in it.

Hungry, and also sad. Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.

I'm ashamed of my own reluctance, my lack of desire; but the truth is that I would be terrified to get into bed with a woman. Women collect grievances, hold grudges and change shape. They pass hard, legitimate judgements, unlike the purblind guesses of men, fogged with romanticism and ignorance and bias and wish. I can understand why men are afraid of them, as they are frequently accused of being.

Me estiro, pues, dentro de la habitación, bajo el ojo de escayola del techo, detrás de las cortinas blancas, entre las sábanas, y me deslizo dentro de mi propio tiempo, abandonando el ritmo que nos marcan. Aunque esto también forma parte del ritmo, y yo no estoy fuera de él.

Tonight I have a little surprise for you," he says. He laughs; it's more like a snigger. I notice that everything this evening is little. He wishes to diminish things, myself included.

buttons were made from wood and bone, and the fancier ones from cow horns. These last two materials could be obtained for next to nothing from the several abattoirs in the vicinity, and as for the wood, it lay all round about, clogging up the land, and

And when I go that way, grow fur, start howling, scratch at your airwaves: no matter who I claim I am or how I love you, turn the key. Bar the window.

Stan got the message. He allowed the chicken assignations. What did that make him? A chicken pimp. Better than dead.

You don't teach boys to be charming. It makes people think they are devious.

What was the guilty thing?" says Anne-Marie. "What's Prospero done that's so terrible?" "Indeed, what?" Felix asks rhetorically. More of the cast have gathered around. "He doesn't tell us. It's one more puzzle in the play. But The Tempest is a play about a man producing a play—one that's come out of his own head, his 'fancies'—so maybe the fault for which he needs to be pardoned is the play itself.

Quien inventó el espejo nos hizo un flaco favor a la mayoría; debíamos de ser más felices antes de saber la imagen que damos.