Quotes from Margaret Atwood

I bet it's your mouldy socks," said Jimmy. "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten these little socks.

Falling in love, I said. Falling into it, we all did then, one way or another. How could we have made such light of it? Sneered even. As if it was trivial for us, a frill, whim. It was, on the contrary, heavy going.

We dangle by a flimsy thread, Our little lives are grains of sand: The Cosmos is a tiny sphere Held in the hollow of God's hand. Give up your anger and your spite, And imitate the Deer, the Tree; In sweet Forgiveness find your joy, For it alone can set you free.

Extreme emotions could be lethal. If I can't have you nobody will , and so forth. Death could set in.

But if its a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone.

It's story that counts. No use telling me this isn't a story, or not the same story. I know you've fulfilled everything you promised, you love me, we sleep till noon and we spend the rest of the day eating, the food is superb, I don't deny that. But I worry about the future.... Don't evade, don't pretend you won't leave after all: you leave in the story and the story is ruthless.

You want to go back to where the sky was inside us

He manages to appear puzzled, as if he can't quite remember how we all got in here. As if we are something he inherited, like a Victorian pump organ, and he hasn't figured out what to do with us. What we are worth.

But we own nothing they want, so we don't qualify as terrorists.

The written word is so much like evidence — like something that can be used against you later.

Not that it isn't great to see you. But it's not so great for you. What'd you do wrong? Laugh at his dick?

We would not be Human if we did not prefer to be the devourers rather than the devoured, but either is a blessing. Should your life be required of you, rest assured that it is required by Life.

Death is a beautiful woman, with wings and one breast almost bare; or is that Victory? I can't remember. They

But who can remember pain, once it's over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

Winter is not so dangerous. I need hardness, cold, rigidity; not this heaviness, as if I'm a melon on a stem, this liquid ripeness.

It's good to have small goals that can be easily attained.

The whole world is now one vast uncontrolled experiment - the way it always was, Crake would have said - and the doctrine of unintended consequences is in full spate.

to quote George Orwell: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." And to quote him again: three words: Tell. The. Truth.

Language itself had lost its solidity; it had become thin, contingent, slippery, a viscid film on which he was sliding around like an eyeball on a plate. An eyeball that could still see, however. That was the trouble.

When the slugs begin to talk there's no time to lose.

A bird of the air will carry the voice.

I find the entrance to the women's washroom...There's a rest area, gently lit in pinkish tones, with several easy chairs and a sofa, in a lime-green bamboo-shoot print, with a wall clock above it in a gold filigree frame. Here they haven't removed the mirror, there's a long one opposite the sofa. You need to know, here, what you look like.

Dear Sir, I reply, I never had any. Bad sex, that is. It was never the sex, it was the other things, the absence of flowers, the death threats, the eating habits at breakfast. I notice I'm using the past tense.

She was small-boned and exquisite, and naked like the rest of them, with nothing on her but a garland of flowers and a pink hair ribbon, frequent props on the sex-kiddie sites.