Quotes from Margaret Atwood

He has tried imagining her as a prostitute—he often plays this private mental game with various women he encounters—but he can't picture any man actually paying for her services. It would be like paying to be run over by a wagon, and would be, like that experience, a distinct threat to the health.

But they only run away. Run isn't quite accurate. Their legs don't move. Their still-twitching feet don't touch the ground.

Pen Is Envy, Aunt Lydia would say, quoting another Center motto, warning us away from such objects.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans, as used to be said; though in present day, the idea of God laughing is next door to blasphemy. An ultra-serious fellow, God is now.

Watch out for art, Crake used to say. As soon as they start doing art, we're in trouble. Symbolic thinking of any kind would signal downfall, in Crake's view. Next they'd be inventing idols, and funerals, and grave goods, and the afterlife, and sin, and Linear B, and kings, and then slavery and war. Snowman longs to question them—who first had the idea of making a reasonable facsimile of him, of Snowman, out of a jar lid and a mop? But that will have to wait.

It's an event, a small defiance of rule, so small as to be undetectable, but such moments are the rewards I hold out for myself, like the candy I hoarded, as a child, at the back of a drawer. Such moments are possibilities, tiny peepholes.

In reduced circumstances you have to believe all kinds of things.

It was the feet they'd do, for a first offense. They used steel cables, frayed at the ends. After

She was not stunned, the way I was. In some strange way she was gleeful, as if this was what she had been expecting for some time and now she'd been proven right.

It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described

Having long ago whispered I want to die , I now realize that this wish will indeed be fulfilled, and sooner rather than later. No matter that I've changed my mind about it.

The past is so much safer, because whatever's in it has already happened. It can't be changed; so, in a way, there's nothing to dread.

If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to." ? Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

there's often more in silences than in what is actually said – in the lips pressed together, the head turned away, the quick sideways glance. The shoulders drawn up as if carrying a heavy weight.

He has been trying to sing Love into existence again And he has failed.

I prefer to be upright and contained -- an urn in daylight.

He came to understand why serial killers sent helpful clues to the police.

In God we trust, all others pay cash.

There are five different prayers: for health, wealth, a death, a birth, a sin. You pick the one you want, punch in the number, then punch in your own number so your account will be debited, and punch in the number of times you want the prayer repeated.

but love was undependable, it came and then it went; so it was good to have a money value, because then at least those who wanted to make a profit from you made sure you were fed enough and not damaged by too much. Also there were many who had neither love nor money value and having one of these things was better than having nothing.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked; as I never was when I was not one.

But then it came to me that who I really am is a person who doesn't need to know who he really is, in the usual sense. What does it mean, anyway - family background and so forth? People use it mostly as an excuse for their own snobbery, or else their failings. I'm free of the temptation, that's all. I'm free of the strings. Nothing ties me down.

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.

Watch out for the leaders, Crake used to say. First the leaders and the led, then the tyrants and the slaves, then the massacres. That's how it's always gone.