Quotes from Margaret Atwood

One look at a banana and you can tell it came from outer space.

That's what you get for being food.

For the heart was both key and lock, and he who could master the hearts of men and learn their secrets was well on the way to mastering the Fates and controlling the thread of his own destiny.

There is a Do this or Do that with God, but not any Because.

I have them, these attacks of the past, like faintness, a wave sweeping over my head.

Toast is me. I am toast.

She looks like a very young old person, or a very old young person; but then, she's looked that way ever since she was two.

Being socially retarded is like being mentally retarded, it arouses in others disgust and pity and the desire to torment and reform.

None of them was willing to be a girl, he said. You can see why not. I know, right? I don't blame them, she said with a hard edge to her voice. Being a girl is the pits, trust me.

A writer's age at the time of a work's composition is never irrelevant.

Blondes are like white mice, you only find them in cages. They wouldn't last long in nature. They're too conspicuous.

Now I only need to look out at them through my sky-blue eyes. They see their own ill will staring them in the forehead and turn tail. Before, I was not a witch. But now I am one.

But she went to tell the bees. She felt like an idiot doing it, but she'd promised. She remembered that it wasn't enough just to think at them: you had to say the words out loud. Bees were the messengers between this world and the other worlds, Pilar had said. Between the living and the dead. They carried the Word made air.

There were still newspapers, then. We used to read them in bed. It's French, he said. From m'aidez . Help Me.

Pink is supposed to weaken your enemies, make them go soft on you, which must be why it's used for baby girls. It's a wonder the military hasn't got on to this.

with shrunken fingers we ate our oranges and bread, shivering in the parked car; though we know we had never been there before, we knew we had been there before.

The bell that measures time is ringing

Why can't I believe? she asked the darkness. Behind her eyelids she saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned. It gazed at her. She gazed at it. You are the effect of a carefully calibrated blend of plant toxins, she told it. Then she fell asleep.

The memos that came from above telling him he'd done a good job meant nothing to him because they'd been dictated by semi-literates; all they proved was that no one at AnooYou was capable of appreciating how clever he had been. He came to understand why serial killers sent helpful clues to the police.

When a shameful thing is done to you, the shamefulness rubs off on you. You feel dirtied.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum (Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down)

We all know that a book is not really a person. It isn't a human being. But if you are a lover of books as books – as objects, that is – and ignore the human element in them – that is, their voices – you will be committing an error of the soul, because you will be an idolator, or else a fetishist.

And consider: it is loss to which everything flows, absence in which everything flowers

As Charles Darwin said,'The economy shown by Nature in her resources is striking,'' says the Spirit. 'All wealth comes from Nature. Without it, there wouldn't be any economics. The primary wealth is food, not money. Therefore anything that concerns the handling of the land also concerns me.