Quotes from Margaret Atwood

Antinous sighed. 'The gods wanted to destroy us,' he said. 'That's everyone's excuse for behaving badly,' I said.

The liver is evil and must be punished.

Take what the moment offers. Don't close doors. Be thankful.

A movie about the past is not the same as the past.

Ill winds blow far and find a ready welcome.

No reply is in itself a reply.

Somewhere in Limbo, all the old devices and appliances and costumes are lined up, waiting their turn for reentry.

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time. Keep

It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution.

Now it's full night, clear, moonless and filled with stars, which are not eternal as was once thought, which are not where we think they are. If they were sounds, they would be echoes, of something that happened millions of years ago: a word made of numbers. Echoes of light, shining out of the midst of nothing. It's old light, and there's not much of it. But it's enough to see by.

But Jimmy, you should know. All sex is real.

after the man had left, the mothers who had sold their children felt empty and sad. They felt as if this act, done freely by themselves (no one had forced them, no one had threatened them) had not been performed willingly. They felt cheated as well, as if the price had been too low. Why hadn't they demanded more?

The freezing rain sifts down, handfuls of shining rice thrown by some unseen celebrant. Wherever it hits, it crystallizes into a granulated coating of ice.

The things I believe can't all be true, though one of them must be. But I believe all of them, all three versions of Luke, at once and the same time. This contradictory way of believing seems to me, right now, the only way I can believe anything. Whatever the truth is, I will be ready for it.

He can't shake the feeling that this place is some sort of pyramid scheme, and that those who fail to understand that will be left empty-handed. But there's no obvious reason for this feeling of his. Maybe he's ungrateful by nature.

This bug is something new though. We've got the bioprint.

There is so much beautiful in the world if you look around. You are looking only at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy. It's not good for you.

Sex is like drink, it's bad to start brooding about it too early in the day.

Money was the only measure of worth, for everyone, they got no respect as mothers.

And they're smiling at her, not half-smiles either, but full-on total-face smiles that are only partly fake.

Whatever our shapes and features, we were snares and enticements despite ourselves, we were the innocent and blameless causes that through our very nature could make men drunk with lust, so that they'd stagger and lurch and topple over the verge—The verge of what? we wondered.

The poems that used to entrance me in the days of Miss Violence now struck me as overdone and sickly. Alas, burthen, thine, cometh, aweary —the archaic language of unrequited love. I was irritated with such words, which rendered the unhappy lovers—I could now see—faintly ridiculous, like poor moping Miss Violence herself. Soft-edged, blurry, soggy, like a bun fallen into the water. Nothing you'd want to touch

Oh God. It's no joke. Oh God oh God. How can I keep on living?

The Human Words of God speak of the Creation in terms that could be understood by the men of old. There is no talk of galaxies or genes, for such terms would have confused them greatly! But must we therefore take as scientific fact the story that the world was created in six days, thus making a nonsense of observable data?