Quotes from Margaret Atwood

You wouldn't think it would be Toby--she was so tough and hard--but if you're drowning, a soft squashy thing is no good to hold on to. You need something more solid.

One day, he said that what you had to do in any adversarial situation was to kill the king, as in chess. I said people didn't have kings any more. He said he meant the centre of power, but today it wouldn't be a single person, it would be the technological connections.

I'm training to be an Aunt," I said. "I'm not really supposed to like anyone." 49 My reading abilities progressed slowly and with many stumbles.

Pearls are congealed oyster spit.

When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all.

Does she ever see him watching her through the picture window? Most likely. Does she think he's a lecherous old man? Very probably. But he isn't exactly that. How to convey the mix of longing, wistfulness, and muted regret that he feels? His regret is that he isn't a lecherous old man, but he wishes he were. He wishes he still could be.

Only fools, he said, were given to bragging about how much they could drink.

If you don't like it, change it, we said, to each other and to ourselves. And so we would change the man, for another one. Change, we were sure, was for the better always. We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.

I am a believer in sensible choices, so different from many of my own. Also in sensible names for children.

Jon smashes things, and glues the shards into place in the pattern of breakage. I can see the appeal.

Everyone's too sad for everything.

All she wants is a miracle, because anything else is hopeless.

however dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void.

We fight in whispers or well out of the way, because if we're caught we will both be punished. For this reason we don't tell on each other. We know from experience that the satisfactions of betrayal are scarcely worth it.

My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red. —ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, Maud, 1855.

It is my opinion that they sometimes take what is intended for us, which would not surprise me in the least, as it is dog eat dog around here and they are the bigger dogs.

The ability to concoct plausible lies is a talent not to be underestimated

He smiles most of the time and has eyes that the naive might think of as candid.

This is "poetry," this song of the wind across teeth, this message from the flayed tongue to the flayed ear.

I'm such a mess," he says. "Sometimes I think everyone's dead.

I'd wanted to leave home, but have it stay in place, waiting for me, unchanged, so I could step back into it at will.

So, the book is not 'anti-religion.' It is against the use of religion as a front for tyranny; which is a different thing altogether.

Some people like to throw objects, such as glasses of water or rocks, but nail painting is more positive. If more world leaders would take it up there would be less overall suffering, in her opinion.

Not giving a hoot would be a luxury. It describes the fine, irreverent carelessness I myself would like to cultivate, in these and other matters.