Quotes About Margaret Atwood

Are you there? I whisper. Large as life and twice as ugly, Moira whispers back.

The genres, it is thought, have other designs on us. They want to entertain, as opposed to rubbing our noses in the daily grit produced by the daily grind. Unhappily for realistic novelists, the larger reading public likes being entertained.

the hearts gone bubonic with jealousy and greed, glinting through the vests and sweaters of anyone at all.

Love is not a profession genteel or otherwise sex is not dentistry the slick filling of aches and cavities you are not my doctor you are not my cure, nobody has that power, you are merely a fellow/traveler.

Nothing takes place in the bed but sleep; or no sleep. I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed. There's a lot that doesn't bear thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last.

You always do good ones. We trust you, Mr. Duke, Says Dylan. Foolish lads, thinks Felix: never trust a professional ham.

He keeps his voice kindly but remote. A cross between a pedagogue, soothsayer, and a benevolent uncle – that should be his tone.

Maybe all women should be robots, he thinks with a tinge of acid: the flesh-and-blood ones are out of control.

men had a thing about hair, it made them spin out of control, they said. And my hair was particularly inflammatory because it was greenish.

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.

Perhaps her mind is slipping, perhaps she's going off the tracks, perhaps she is coming unhinged. Unhinged, like a broken door, like a rammed gate, like a rusting strongbox. When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside and other things get in that ought to be shut out. ~~Margaret Atwood

The television series has respected one of the axioms of the novel: no event is allowed into it that does not have a precedent in human history.

Aunt Lydia, you are too good," he will beam. Too good to be true, I will think. Too good for this earth. Good, be thou my evil.

As a species we're doomed by hope, then? You could call it hope. That, or desperation. But we're doomed without hope, as well, said Jimmy. Only as individuals, said Crake cheerfully.

It's a lifelong failing: she has never been prepared. But how can you have a sense of wonder if you're prepared for everything? Prepared for the sunset. Prepared for the moonrise. Prepared for the ice storm. What a flat existence that would be.

They understood about dreaming, he knew that: they dreamed themselves. Crake hadn't been able to eliminate dreams. We're hard-wired for dreams, he'd said. He couldn't get rid of the singing either. We're hard-wired for singing. Singing and dreams were entwined.

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.

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

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.

But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men.   I

The butter is greasy and it will go rancid and I will smell like an old cheese; but at least it's organic, as they used to say. To such devices we have descended.

Time comes in waves here, a sickness, one day after the other rolling on; I move up, it's called awake, then down into the uneasy nights but never forward.

left lipstick imprints the shape of grateful, rubbery sighs...

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