Quotes from Margaret Atwood

We were custodians of an invaluable treasure that existed, unseen, inside us; we were precious flowers that had to be kept safely inside glass houses, or else we would be ambushed and our petals would be torn off and our treasure would be stolen and we would be ripped apart and trampled by the ravenous men who might lurk around any corner, out there in the wide sharp-edged sin-ridden world.

In the daylight we know what's gone is gone, but at night it's different. Nothing gets finished, not dying, not mourning;

It was true, I took too much for granted; I trusted fate, back then.

No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well.

Why do we want other people to like us, even if we don't really care about them all that much?

For it is not always the one that strikes the blow that is the actual murderer; and Mary was done to death by that unknown gentleman, as surely as if he'd taken the knife and plunged it into her body himself.

In the burned house I am eating breakfast. You understand? There is no house, there is no breakfast, yet here I am

It must have been then that I began to lose faith in reasonable argument as the sole measure of truth.

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. I refuse to say this. If it means I will have to forgive Mrs. Smeath or else go to Hell when I die, I'm ready to go. Jesus must have known how hard it is to forgive, that was why he put this in. He was always putting in things that were impossible to do really, such as giving away all your money.

Time: old cold time, old sorrow, settling down in layers like silt in a pond.

I have a fork and a spoon, but never a knife… as if I'm lacking manual skills or teeth. I have both, however. That's why I'm not allowed a knife.

All myths are stories, but not all stories are myths: among stories, myths hold a special place.

What was about this that made us feel we deserved it?

A bachelor, a studio, those were the names for that kind of apartment. Separate entrance it would say in the ads, and that meant you could have sex, unobserved.

otherwise, one of you, most likely the man, would go wandering off on a trajectory of his own, taking his addictive body with him and leaving you with bad withdrawal, which you could counteract by exercise. If you didn't work it out it was because one of you had the wrong attitude. Everything that went on in your life was thought to be due to some positive or negative power emanating from inside your head.

That's the kind of stories I know. Sad ones. Anyway, taken to it's logical conclusion, every story is sad, because at the end everyone dies.

He'll find out somehow, because journeys end in lovers meeting.

I consider telling my brother, asking him for help. But tell him what exactly? I have no black eyes, no bloody noses to report: Cordelia does nothing physical. If it was boys, chasing or teasing, he would know what to do, but I don't suffer from boys in this way. Against girls and their indirectness, their whisperings, he would be helpless.

Every Canadian has a complicated relationship with the United States, whereas Americans think of Canada as the place where the weather comes from.

knowledge is power, especially discreditable knowledge.

One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others. I was one person: I risked becoming no person.

He would have died soon, but more painfully. Anyway, it was Urban Bloodshed Limitation. First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled.

I feared I might lose my faith. If you've never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying, that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you'll be left all alone.

The young ones are often the most dangerous, the most fanatical, the jumpiest with their guns. They haven't yet learned about existence through time.