Quotes from Margaret Atwood

Moira had power now, she'd been set loose, she'd set herself loose. She was now a loose woman.

But Molly didn't hate men. With men, Molly was a toad-kisser. she thought any toad could be turned into a prince if he was only kissed enough, by her. I was different. I knew a toad was a toad and would remain so. The thing was to find the most congenial among the toads and learn to appreciate their finer points. You had to develop an eye for warts. I called this compromise. Molly called it cynicism

Una rata que está dentro de un laberinto es libre de ir a cualquier sitio, siempre que permanezca dentro del laberinto.

Don't go yet," he said, but it was never any use saying don't go yet to her. When she'd decided a thing, she was on her way.

Fraternize means to behave like a brother. Luke told me that. He said there was no corresponding word that meant to behave like a sister. Sororize, it would have to be, he said.

The thing to remember is that there is nothing new about the society depicted in The Handmaid's Tale except the time and place. All of the things I have written about have been done before, more than once.

The question at this age is what kind of dog you will shortly resemble. She will be a beagle, Prue a terrier. Pamela will be an Afghan, or something equally unearthly.

Gavin has tried quoting Yeats to the effect that women must labour to be beautiful, but Reynolds--who used to be a passionate Yeats fan--is now of the opinion that Yeats is entitled to his point of view, but that was then and social attitudes were different then, and in actual fact Yeats is dead.

Our big mistake was teaching them to read. We won't do that again.

He showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand … as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, What may this be, and I was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last. For I thought it might fall suddenly to nothing, for little cause; and I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so has everything its being, through the love of God.

You'll learn about all of that when you're old enough," Aunt Vidala would say. All of that: the Handmaids were part of all of that. Something bad, then; something damaging, or something damaged, which might be the same thing.

I don't want to be left by myself in this room. The walls are too empty, there are no pictures on them nor curtains on the little high-up window, nothing to look at and so you look at the wall, and after you do that for a time, there are pictures on it after all, and red flowers growing.

Some of the best things are done by those with nowhere to turn, by those who don't have time, by those who truly understand the word helpless. They dispense with the calculation of risk and profit, they take no thought for the future, they're forced at spearpoint into the present tense. Thrown over a precipice, you fall or else you fly; you clutch at any hope, however unlikely; however - if I may use such an overworked word - miraculous. What we mean by that is, Against all odds.

So instead she's sitting remembering how much she can no longer remember, of who she used to be, who she thought she would turn into when she grew up.

Rome versus the Visigoths, Ancient Egypt versus the Hyksos, Aztecs versus the Spaniards.

It causes a jolt of terror to run through him, this absence of official time. Nobody nowhere knows what time it is.

Petchenegs versus Byzantium," said Jimmy, one memorable day.

people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.

A scar is like writing on your body. It tells about something that once happened to you, such as a cut on your skin where blood came out. What

what is is, as Grandma Win used to say, and what can't be cured must be endured, and laugh and the world laughs with you but cry and you cry alone.

What I miss is what she'd say. What she would have said.

She looks at you as if she really sees you." So many people had looked past me. "I think I'd like that," I said. "No," said Becka. "That's why she's so scary.

The instinct to soothe, to make it better. There there, she'd say, as he woke from a nightmare. Things are so hard for you. All this she would have believed, because otherwise how could she have kept on living?

Monkey brains, had been Crake's opinion. Monkey paws, monkey curiosity, the desire to take apart, turn inside out, smell, fondle, measure, improve, trash, discard – all hooked up to monkey brains, an advanced model of monkey brains but monkey brains all the same. Crake had no very high opinion of human ingenuity, despite the large amount of it he himself possessed.