Quotes from Margaret Atwood

But if Crake wanted her to stay longer on any given night, do it again maybe, she'd make some excuse—jet lag, a headache, something plausible. Her inventions were seamless, she was the best poker-faced liar in the world, so there would be a kiss goodbye for stupid Crake, a smile, a wave, a closed door, and the next minute there she would be, with Jimmy.

The protector was her, the greater power was her, the Universe that took an interest was her as well; always her. "I love you," I said.

Alone among the animals, we suffer from the future perfect tense.

your kiss no longer literature but fine print, a set of instructions.

you appear without prelude midway between my eyes and the nearest trees, your colours bright, your outline flattened suspended in the air with no more reason for occurring exactly here than this billboard, this highway or that cloud.

she'd have been gnawing her way through his bedroom walls to sink her avid fingers into his youthful flesh.

Her life began to seem long. Her adrenalin was running out. Soon she would be thirty, and all she could see ahead was more of the same.

Considering that the whole point of Consilience is for things to run smoothly, with happy citizens, or are they inmates? Both, to be honest. Because citizens were always a bit like inmates and inmates were always a bit like citizens, so Consilience and Positron have only made it official.

Rezábamos por la vacuidad, para hacernos dignas de ser llenadas: de gracia, de amor, de abnegación, de semen y de niños. Oh, Dios, Rey del universo, gracias por no haberme hecho hombre. Oh, Dios, destrúyeme. Házme fértil. Mortifica mi carne para que pueda multiplicarme. Permite que me realice…

Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words. Maybe

Something about a bunch of trees made people think they could cut loose. "Wherever there's Nature, there's assholes," he said cheerfully.

There was a protest outside the Gilead Consulate in Toronto, but it wasn't well attended: Melanie and Neil weren't famous, and they weren't politicians. I didn't know whether to be sad or angry. Melanie and Neil being murdered made me angry, and so did remembering nice things they'd done when they were alive. But things that should have made me angry, such as why Gilead was being allowed to get away with it, only made me sad.

Every breath we inhale comes from nature; kill it and we kill ourselves.

My mother said Aunt Pauline meant kindly but had standards, which were all very well for those that could afford them.

All that festers is not gold, but it can be made profitable in non-monetary ways: knowledge is power, especially discreditable knowledge. I am not the first person to have recognized this, or to have capitalized on it when possible: every intelligence agency in the world has always known it.

Who can fathom the secrets of the human soul?" I said. "None of us is exempt from sin.

She breathes in the cold air; pellets of blown ice whip against her face. The wind's getting up, as the TV said it would. Nonetheless there's something brisk about being out in the storm, something energizing: it whisks away the cobwebs, it makes you inhale. The

Any death is stupid from the viewpoint of whoever is undergoing it, Adam One used to say, because no matter how much you've been warned, Death always comes without knocking. Why now? is the cry. Why so soon? It's the cry of a child being called home at dusk, it's the universal protest against Time. Just remember, dear Friends: What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. // The Year of the Flood

I don't need that fluff on my coffee. Looks like shaving cream. One swallow and you're foaming at the mouth.

That's the nice thing about me. I'm very flexible, I'm the universal substitute." He reached up over her head and turned off the light.

WITHOUT MEMORY, there is no debt. Put another way: without story, there is no debt.

A romantika valahol a középtávolban zajlik. A romantika nem más, mint benézni önmagadhoz harmattól párás ablakon át. A romantika nem más, mint kihagyni bizonyos dolgokat: ahol az élet röfög és szortyog, ott a romantika csak sóhajt.

The difference between a civilized man and a barbarous fiend—a madman, say - Lies, perhaps, Merely in a thin veneer of willed self-restraint.

But her mind can't hold him, she can't fix the memory of what he looks like. It's as if a breeze blows over the water and he's dispersed, into broken colours, into ripples; then he reforms elsewhere, past the nest pillar, taking on his familiar body.