Quotes from Margaret Atwood

discretion is the better part of valour

I'd never gone out with anyone because I'd never met anyone I might want to go out with. There seemed to be no way that could happen. Boys from the Wyle School were not possible: I'd gone through grade school with them, I'd seen them pick their noses, and some of them had been pants-wetters. You can't feel romantic with those images in your mind.

was the age at which parents suddenly transform from people who know everything into people who know nothing.

He has several highly valuable editions that I envy: Doré's Inferno, Dalí's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Picasso's Lysistrata

A faithless preacher with a good manner and voice will always convert more than a limp-handed long-faced fool, no matter how Godly.

Sorprende comprobar con que rapidez se pierde la entereza en ausencia de otras personas.

Por que achei que apesar de tudo as coisas correriam normalmente? Acho que porque já estávamos ouvindo notícias como aquelas há muito tempo. Você não acredita que o céu está caindo até que um pedaço dele caia em cima de você.

What were these animals then? They didn't have names, but I knew what they were.

He has a vision of the top of his neck, opening up into his head like a bathroom drain. Fragments of words are swirling down it, in a grey liquid he realizes is his dissolving brain.

If it's only a story, it becomes less frightening. The

The pain of what? The pain of the raw torn places, the damaged membranes where he'd whanged up against the Great Indifference of the Universe. One big shark's mouth, the universe. Row after row of razor-sharp teeth.

The times when she was away were hard for Jimmy. He worried about her, he longed for her, he resented her for not being there.

Why do you want to talk about ugly things? she said. ... We should think only beautiful things, as much as we can. There is so much beautiful in the world if you look around. You are looking only at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy. It's not good for you. She would never tell him. Why did this drive him so crazy? It wasn't real sex was it? he asked. In the movies. It was only acting. Wasn't it? But Jimmy, you should know. All sex is real.

Free love," Aunt Beatrice said scornfully. "It's never free. There's always a price.

You think I didn't hate their pity, their forced kindness? And knowing that no matter what I did, how virtuous I was, or hardworking, I would never be beautiful. Not like her, the one who merely had to sit there to be adored. You wonder why I stabbed the blue eyes of my dolls with pins and pulled their hair out until they were bald? Life isn't fair. Why should I be?

Men are sex machines, said Aunt Lydia, and not much more. They only want one thing. You must learn to manipulate them, for your own good. Lead them around by the nose; that is a metaphor. It's nature's way. It's God's device. It's the way things are.

a young woman in desperate financial straits, with no visible relations and no nest egg or trust fund or fallback. People would shake their heads — a shame but what could you do, and at least she had something of marketable value, namely her young ass, and therefore she wouldn't starve to death, and nobody had to feel guilty.

It's astonishing how folks can get so worked up over something that doesn't exist.

remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.

He slides off into half-sleep and dreams of Oryx, floating on her back in a swimming pool, wearing an outfit that appears to be made of delicate white tissue-paper petals. They spread out around her, expanding and contracting like the valves of a jellyfish. The pool is painted a vibrant pink. She smiles up at him and moves her arms gently to keep afloat, and he knows they are both in great danger.

The brain is very protective, it decides what we choose to remember.

Single strand of pearls, wild, not cultured. (Worth it, she said: only the wild ones had souls.)

These kids could hardly burp without some adult pointing a camera at them and telling them to do it again—as if they lived their lives twice, once in reality and the second time for the photo.

My letters! All dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string.… —ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1850.