Quotes from Margaret Atwood

Eu gostaria de não ter vergonha. Gostaria de ser sem vergonha. Gostaria de ser ignorante. Então eu não saberia o quanto era ignorante.

I'm bad at picking heroes.

Virginia Woolf said that writing a novel is like walking through a dark room, holding a lantern which lights up what is already in the room anyway.

from under the ground, from under the waters, they clutch at us, they clutch at us, we won't let go.

I never do such things, however. I only consider them. If I did them, they would be sure I had gone mad again. Gone mad is what they say, and sometimes Run mad, as if mad is a direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don't go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in.

You should always try to imagine what they must be feeling. Of course they will resent you. It is only natural. Try to feel for them. Aunt Lydia thought she was very good at feeling for other people. Try to pity them. Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

her body feels different, no longer taut and sinewy but sponge-like fluid. Saturated. It has a different energy, a deep orangy-like pink, like the inside of a hibiscus.

Just remember this, when the scream at last has ended and you've turned on the lights: by the rules of the game, I must always lie.

There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in ditches or the woods, bludgeoned to death or mutilated, interfered with, as they used to say, but they were about other women, and the men who did such things were other men. None of them were the men we knew.

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.

So when time had begun to run out on Adelia with no really acceptable husband in sight, she'd married money -- crude money, button money. She was expected to refine this money, like oil.

His mother said that all children were arsonists at heart, and if not for the lighter he'd have used matches.

Where there is an emptiness, the mind will obligingly fill it up. Fear is always at hand to supply any vacancies, as is curiosity.

For every year of peace there have been four hundred years of war.

Mouth to mouth I'm bringing you back to life. Why did you drown like that without telling? What numbed you? What rose over your head was gradual and only everybody's air, standard & killing. Your head floats on your hand, on water, you turn over, your heart returns unsteadily to its two strong notes. I'm bringing you back to life, it's mutual.

Of late the three of them wouldn't even let him dry the dishes because he'd dropped too many of them on the floor. He'd done that on purpose, since it was useful to be considered inept when it came to chore division

I lie flat, the damp air above me like a lid. Like earth. I wish it would rain. Better still, a thunderstorm, black clouds, lightning, ear-splitting sound.

Here comes his hand, planing slowly across the white tablecloth like a manta ray in one of those deep-sea documentaries. It's descending onto her own hand, which she shouldn't have left so carelessly lying around on the table.

Pen Is Envy, Aunt Lydia would say, quoting another Center motto, warning us away from such objects. And they were right, it is envy. Just holding it is envy. I envy the Commander his pen. It's one more thing I would like to steal. The

To go through all that and give birth to a shredder: it wasn't a fine thought. We didn't know exactly what would happen to the babies that didn't get passed, that were declared Unbabies. But we knew they were put somewhere, quickly, away.

Time is going faster and faster; the days of the week whisk by like panties.

Don't think that way, Moira would say. Think that way and you'll make it happen.

One boy had drawn a perfect isosceles triangle on every single page- meticulously, it was emphasized. Meticulously was a chilling touch: meticulousness, we knew, was just one step away from full-blown lunacy.

The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish, drying on sand. He