Quotes from Margaret Atwood

Winning intoxicates you, and numbs you to the sufferings of others.

Which of us is it worse for, her or me?

Oh, torture. Is this purgatory, and if it is, why is it so much like the first grade?

But all would come out fine in the end, she added, because the gods were just. I refrained from saying I'd seen scant evidence of that so far.

You'll have to forgive me. I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it.

I have to be more careful about my memories, I have to be sure they're my own and not the memories of other people telling me what I felt, how I acted, what I said: if the events are wrong the feelings I remember about them will be wrong too, I'll start inventing them and there will be no way of correcting it, the ones who could help are gone.

But such messages can be dangerous. Think twice before you wish, and especially before you wish to make yourself into the hand of fate. (Think twice,said Reenie. Laura said,Why only twice? )

It's a juvenile display, the whole act, and pathetic; but it's something I understand.

Look—my feet don't hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn.

Many believed what they were told: that the welfare of the entire kingdom depended on their selflessness.

Into the plastic basket went my selections, and off I set, step by step, sideways down the stairs, like Little Red Riding Hood on her way to Granny's house via the underworld. Except that I myself am Granny, and I contain my own bad wolf. Gnawing away, gnawing away.

The opposite of 'mean' is 'doormat

No. It's the newly conscious young I mean, the ones with ambition and fresh diffidence, those who've learned the hard way that reach exceeds grasp nine times out of ten. How disappointed they are! And if and when they succeed for the first time, how anxious it makes them! They develop insomnia, or claustrophobia, or bulimia, or fear of heights. Now they will have to live up to themselves. Bummer.

She wished him to owe his recovery to her alone – to her care, to her tireless devotion. That is the other side of selflessness: its tyranny.

Canlit might not exert the fascination of - say - a venereal wart.

Why couldn't they be as considerate, as trustworthy, as all-suffering as I had been? That was the line they took, the singers, the yarn-spinners. Don't follow my example, I want to scream in your ears—yes, yours!

As a species we're pathetic in that way: imperfectly monogamous. If we could only pair-bond for life, like gibbons, or else opt for total guilt-free promiscuity, there'd be no more sexual torment.

it was a form of compliment, she felt, since it made her the focus of his attention.

Back to the man's face. Not a handsome face as such, but a face you could trust. Sort of like a math teacher, or a minister. You can tell he's sincere, and sincere is better than handsome. Really handsome men were a bad idea, said Grandma Win, because they had too much to choose from. Too much what? Charmaine had asked her, and Grandma Win said, Never mind.

Lately he's been treating her like white noise, like the rivulet sound on their sleep machine. This would once have hurt her Ã¢â'¬â€œ did hurt her Ã¢â'¬â€œ but now it suits her fine. She

Languor is a more efficient method of control.

Everyone likes to think they are doing good while at the same time pocketing a bag of cash

A Log Cabin quilt is a thing every young woman should have before marriage, as it means the home; and there is always a red square at the centre, which means the hearth fire.

I didn't let on I knew. It would have been dangerous for him. Also, if a man takes pride in his disguising skills, it would be a foolish wife who would claim to recognise him: it's always an imprudence to step between a man and the reflection of his own cleverness.