Quotes from Margaret Atwood

The beauty is an illusion, and also a warning: there's a dark side to beauty, as with poisonous butterflies.

I can tell you're admiring my febrility. I know it's appealing, I practice at it; every woman loves an invalid. But be careful. You might do something destructive: hunger is more basic than love. Florence Nightingale was a cannibal you know.

As it says in the Bible, For now we through a glass, darkly; but then face to face. If it is face to face, there must be two looking.

She stubs out her cigarette in the brown glass ashtray, then settles herself against him, ear to his chest. She likes to hear his voice this way, as if it begins not in his throat but in his body, like a hum or a growl, or like a voice speaking from deep underground. Like the blood moving through her own heart: a word, a word, a word.

It's always encouraging to be told that it is intellectually acceptable to read the sorts of things that you like to read anyway.

Envoi we had no voice we had no name we had no choice we had one face one face the same we took the blame it was no fair but now w're here we're all here too the same as you and now we follow you, we find you now, we call to you to you too wit too woo too wit too woo too woo (The Maids sprout feathers, and fly away as owls.)

Love is giving, marriage is buying and selling. You can't put love into a contract.

If you do bad things for reasons you've been told are good, does it make you a bad person?

It is shocking how many crimes the Bible contains. The Governor's wife should cut them all out and paste them into her scrapbook.

In reduced circumstances the desire to live attaches itself to strange objects. I would like a pet: a bird, say, or a cat. A familiar. Anything at all familiar.

His mouth is on me, his hands, I can't wait and he's moving, already, love, it's been so long, I'm alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling and water softly everywhere, never-ending.

In the desert there is no sign that says, Thou shalt not eat stones. — Sufi proverb

Murderess, murderess, he whispers to himself. It has an allure, a scent almost. Hothouse gardenias. Lurid, but also furtive. He imagines himself breathing it as he draws Grace towards him, pressing his mouth against her. Murderess. He applies it to her throat like a brand.

I didn't want him to become gray and multi-dimensional and complicated like everyone else. Was every Heathcliff a Linton in disguise?

We get along by a symbiotic adjustment of habits and with a minimum of that pale-mauve hostility you often find among women.

Though as he'd say, what is 'belief' but a willingness to suspend the negatives?

She talks with wolves, without knowing what sort of beasts they are: Where have you been all my life? they ask. Where have I been all my life? she replies.

That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first in your head, and then you make it real.

Things written down can cause a great deal of harm. All too often, people don't consider that.

We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.

There is indeed something delightful about being able to combine obedience and disobedience in the same act.

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

If you were a song What song would you be? Would you be the voice that sings, Would you be the music? When I am singing this song for you You are not empty air You are here, One breath and then another: You are here with me...

Sanity is a valuable possession.