Quotes from Margaret Atwood

The truth is I don't want him watching me while I eat. I don't want him to see my hunger. If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything. He

What people want is perfection, said the man. In themselves. But they need the steps to it to be pointed out, said the woman. In a simple order, said the man. With encouragement, said the woman. And a positive attitude.

Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.

From this distance it does resemble fun. Fun is not knowing how it will end.

Their youngness is terrifying. How could I have put myself into the hands of such inexperience?

It's strange to remember how we used to think, as if everything were available to us, as if there were no contingencies, no boundaries; as if we were free to shape and reshape forever the everexpanding perimeters of our lives.

but nothing I ever gave was good for you; it was like white bread to goldfish. they cram and cram, and it kills them, and they drift in the pool, belly-up, making stunned faces and playing on our guilt as if their own toxic gluttony was not their own fault there you are, still outside the window, still with your hands out, still pallid and fish-eyed, still acting stupidly innocent and starved.

They were new money, without a doubt: so new it shrieked. Their clothes looked as it they'd covered themselves in glue, then rolled around in hundred-dollar bills.

Fear is a powerful stimulant.

What pays for all this? Grief in the face of inevitable death. The wish to stop time. The human condition.

Looking back on his life, he sees himself spread out on the earth like a giant covered in tiny threads that have held him down. Tiny threads of petty cares and small concerns, and fears he took seriously at the time. Debts, timetables, the need for money, the longing for comfort; the earworm of sex, repeating itself over and over like a neural feedback loop. He's been the puppet of his own constricted desires.

What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it.

After we're gone the work of our knives will survive this.

The tension between her lack of control and her attempt to suppress it is horrible. It's like a fart in church.

Keep your friends close but your enemies closer. Having no friends, I must make do with enemies.

She sits on the iron throne She is one and three The dark lady the redgold lady The blank lady oracle of blood, she who must be obeyed forever Her glass wings are gone She floats down the river singing her last song

Condoms seemed to her inherently wicked. But they were also inherently funny. They were like rubber gloves with only one finger, and every time she saw one she had to be severe with herself or she'd get the giggles, a terrifying thought because the man might think you were laughing at him, at his dick, at its size, and that would be fatal.

Because they were ready for us, and waiting. The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil.

She must have heard the door opening and closing in the middle of the night; she produces a smile, warm, conspiratorial, and I know what circuits are closing in her head: by screwing Joe she's brought us back together. Saving the world, everyone wants to; men think they can do it with guns, women with their bodies, love conquers all, conquerors love all, mirages raised by words.

Women, and what went on under their collars. Hotness and coldness, coming and going in the strange musky flowery variable-weather country inside their clothes -- mysterious, important, uncontrollable. That was his father's take on things. But men's body temperatures were never dealt with; they were never even mentioned....

I always made dough men, I never made dough women, because after they were baked I would eat them, and that made me feel I had a secret power over men. It was becoming clear to me that, despite the urges Aunt Vidala said I aroused in them, I had no power over them otherwise.

My hands are out of practice, my eyes disused. Most of what I do is drawing, because the preparation of the surface, the laborious underpainting and detailed concentration... are too much for me. I have lost confidence: perhaps all I will ever be is what I am now.

To pronounce the name of the dead is to make them live again, said the ancient Egyptians: not always what one might wish.

I won't fatten them in cages, though. I won't ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won't change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won't drain out their life's blood. They can do all those things for themselves.