Quotes from Margaret Atwood

I look up at the ceiling, tracing the foliage of the wreath. Today it makes me think of a hat, the large-brimmed hats women used to wear at some period during the old days: hats like enormous halos, festooned with fruit and flowers, and the feathers of exotic birds; hats like an idea of paradise, floating just above the head, a thought solidified.

You'll have to face it, the endings are the same however you slice it. Don't be deluded by any other endings, they're all fake, either deliberately fake, with malicious intent to deceive, or just motivated by excessive optimism if not by downright sentimentality. The only authentic ending is the one provided here: John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.

Also she went in for culture, which gave her a certain moral authority. It wouldn't now; but people believed, then, that culture could make you better - a better person. They believed it could uplift you, or the women believed it. They hadn't yet seen Hitler at the opera house.

Here and there are worms, evidence of the fertility of the soil, caught by the sun, half dead; flexible and pink, like lips.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date.

What can a woman do when scandalous gossip travels the world? If she defends herself, she sounds guilty. So I waited some more.

Forced to chose between one irascible tyrant and another, Laura had chosen the one which was greater, and also further away.

oil paints...the look of licked lips.

Me, it's the heart: that's the part lacking. I used to want one: a dainty cushion of red silk dangling from a blood ribbon, fit for sticking pins in. But I've changed my mind. Hearts hurt. — Margaret Atwood, from "The Tin Woodwoman Gets a Massage ," Dearly: New Poems (Ecco, 2020)

Sorry solves nothing

On impulse he might die for her, but living for her would be quite different. He has no talent for monotony.

Stick a shovel in the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light.

They seem close, the stars, but they're far away. Their light is millions, billions of years out of date. Messages with no sender.

The moon. Even though we know it's coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush.

What possesses them, these young girls with a talent for self-immolation?

and each of his voices left his body in a different colored soul and floated up towards the sun still singing.

I remember adapt," says Toby. "It was another way of saying tough luck. To people you weren't going to help out.

Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences to things you didn't even know you'd done.

You'll be here but not here, a muscle memory, like hanging a hat on a hook that's not there any longer.

This is what I miss… not something that's gone, but something that will never happen.

Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.

Daughters of Naiads were a dime a dozen in those days; the place was crawling with them. Nevertheless, it never hurts to be of semi-divine birth. Or it never hurts immediately.

Sleeping in your clothes makes you tired. The clothes are crumpled, and also your body underneath them. I feel as if I've been rolled into a bundle and thrown on the floor.

If you can't stop the waves, go sailing.