Quotes by Margaret Atwood

How much misery . . . how much needless despair has been caused by a series of biological mismatches, a misalignment of the hormones and pheromones? Resulting in the fact that the one you love so passionately wont or cant love you. As a species were pathetic in that way: imperfectly monogamous. If we could only pair-bond for life, like gibbons, or else opt for total guilt-free promiscuity, thered be no more sexual torment. Better plan - make it cyclical and also inevitable, as in the other mammals. Youd never want someone you couldnt have.

Not that it isnt great to see you. But its not so great for you. Whatd you do wrong? Laugh at his dick?

Nobody wanted to be sexless, but nobody wanted to be nothing but sex

There was old sex in the room and loneliness, and expectation, of something without a shape or name. I remember that yearning, and was never the same as the hands that were on us there and then, in the small of the back, or out back, in the parking lot, or in the television room with the sound turned down and only the pictures flickering over lifting flesh. We yearned for the future How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?

Condoms seemed to her inherently wicked. But they were also inherently funny. They were like rubber gloves with only one finger, and every time she saw one she had to be severe with herself or she’d get the giggles, a terrifying thought because the man might think you were laughing at him, at his dick, at its size, and that would be fatal.

But thoughtless ingratitude is the armour of the young; without it, how would they ever get through life? The old wish the young well, but they wish them ill also: they would like to eat them up, and absorb their vitality, and remain immortal themselves. Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past - the past of others, loaded on their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace.

Children were vehicles for passing things along. These things could be kingdoms, rich wedding gifts, stories, grudges, blood feuds. Through children, alliances were forged; through children, wrongs were avenged. To have a child was to set loose a force in the world.

But it seems she’d wanted children after all, because when she was told she’d been accidentally sterilized she could feel all the light leaking out of her.

According to Adam One, the Fall of Man was multidimensional. The ancestral primates fell out of the trees; then they fell from vegetarianism into meat-eating. Then they fell from instinct into reason, and thus into technology; from simple signals into complex grammar, and thus into humanity; from firelessness into fire, and thence into weaponry; and from seasonal mating into an incessant sexual twitching. Then they fell from a joyous life in the moment into the anxious contemplation of the vanished past and the distant future.

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldnt be that hard.

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 shed been proven right.

I guess thats how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult. 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 calm, they said on television. Everything is under control. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. 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. They said it would be temporary. There wasnt even any rioting in the streets. People stayed at home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasnt even an enemy you could point your finger at. ...Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldnt be too careful.

Theres just one thing I want you to remember. You know those chemicals women have in them, when theyve got PMS? Well, men have the very same chemicals in them all the time.

He was a dork, a dink, a dong… Why should the male member be used as a term of abuse? No man hated his own dorkdinkdong, quite the opposite. But maybe it was an affront that any other man had one. That must be the truth.

I dont want a man around, what use are they except for ten seconds worth of half babies

Lambhood and tigerishness may be found in either gender, and in the same individual at different times.

But if you happen to be a man, sometime in the future, and youve made it this far, please remember: you will never be subjected to the temptation of feeling you must forgive, a man, as a woman.

But theres something missing in them, even the nice ones. Its like theyre permanently absent-minded, like that cant quite remember who they are.

Fraternize means to behave like a brother. Luke told me that. He said there was no corresponding word that meant to behave like a sister. Sororize, it would have to be, he said. From the Latin.