Quotes by Margaret Atwood

You couldn’t leave words lying around where our enemies might find them.

I dont want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I cant even see it, something thats drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.

They were wrong about the sun.It does not go down into the underworld at night.The sun leaves merelyand the underworld emerges.It can happen at any moment.It can happen in the morning,you in the kitchen going throughyour mild routines.Plate, cup, knife.All at once there’s no blue, no green,no warning.

There are days when I can hardly make it out of bed. I find it an effort to speak. I measure progress in steps, the next one and the next one, as far as the bathroom. These steps are major accomplishments. I focus on taking the cap off the toothpaste, getting the brush up to my mouth. I have difficulty lifting my arm to do even that. I feel I am without worth, that nothing I can do is of any value, least of all to myself.

Last night I felt the approach of nothing. Not too close but on its way, like a wingbeat, like the cooling of the wind, the slight initial tug of an undertow.

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

I pray where I am, sitting by the window, looking out through the curtain at the empty garden. I dont even close my eyes. Out there or inside my head, its an equal darkness. Or light.My God. Who Art in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is within.I wish you would tell me Your Name, the real one I mean. But You will do as well as anything.I wish I knew what You were up to. But whatever it is, help me to get through it, please. Though maybe its not our doing: I dont believe for an instant that whats going on out there is what You meant.I have enough daily bread, so I wont waste time on that. It isnt the main problem. The problem is getting it down without choking on it.Now we come to forgiveness. Dont worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe, if they are safe. Dont let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.I suppose I should say I forgive whoever did this, and whatever theyre doing now. Ill try, but it isnt easy.Temptation comes next. At the Center, temptation was anything much more than eating and sleeping. Knowing was a temptation. What you dont know wont tempt you, Aunt Lydia used to say.Maybe I dont really want to know whats going on. Maybe Id rather not know. Maybe I couldnt bear to know. The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge.I think about the chandelier too much, though its gone now. But you could use a hook, in the closet. Ive considered the possibilities. All youd have to do, after attaching yourself, would be to lean your weight forward and not fight.Deliver us from evil.Then theres Kingdom, power, and glory. It takes a lot to believe in those right now. But Ill try it anyway. In Hope, as they say on the gravestones.You must feel pretty ripped off. I guess its not the first time.If I were You Id be fed up. Id really be sick of it. I guess thats the difference between us.I feel very unreal talking to You like this. I fee as if Im talking to a wall. I wish Youd answer. I feel so alone.All alone by the telephone. Except that I cant use the telephone. And if I could, who could I call?Oh God. Its no joke. Oh God oh God. How can I keep on living.

There were places you didnt want to walk, precautions you took that had to do with locks on windows and doors, drawing the curtains, leaving on lights. These things you did were like prayers; you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.

Im working on my own life story. I dont mean Im putting it together; no, Im taking it apart. If youd wanted the narrative line you should have asked earlier, when I still knew everything and was more than willing to tell. That was before I discovered the virtues of scissors, the virtues of matches.

We may call Eurydice forth from the world of the dead, but we cannot make her answer; and when we turn to look at her we glimpse her only for a moment, before she slips from our grasp and flees. As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.

Men and women tried each other on, casually, like suits, rejecting whatever did not fit.

Now we come to forgiveness. Dont worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe, if they are safe. Dont let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.

There is the staircase,there is the sun.There is the kitchen,the plate with toast and strawberry jam,your subterfuge,your ordinary mirage.You stand red-handed.You want to wash yourself in earth, in rocks and grassWhat are you supposed to dowith all this loss?In the daylight we knowwhats gone is gone,but at night its different.Nothing gets finished,not dying, not mourning;the dead repeat themselves, like clumsy drunkslurching sideways through the doorswe open to them in sleep;these slurred guests, never entirely welcome,even those we have loved the most,especially those we have loved the most,returning from where we shoved themaway too quickly:from under the ground, from under the water,they clutch at us, they clutch at us,we wont let go.

Youre sad because youre sad.Its psychic. Its the age. Its chemical.Go see a shrink or take a pill,or hug your sadness like an eyeless dollyou need to sleep.Well, all children are sadbut some get over it.Count your blessings. Better than that,buy a hat. Buy a coat or a pet.Take up dancing to forget.

An old walrus-faced waiter attended to me; he had the knack of pouring the coffee and the hot milk from two jugs, held high in the air, and I found this entrancing, as if he were a childs magician. One day he said to me - he had some English - Why are you sad?Im not sad, I said, and began to cry. Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous.You should not be sad, he said, gazing at me with his melancholy, leathery walrus eyes. It must be the love. But you are young and pretty, you will have time to be sad later. The French are connoisseurs of sadness, they know all the kinds. This is why they have bidets. It is criminal, the love, he said, patting my shoulder. But none is worse.

...He was wrong about the sadness though: far better to have it when youre young. A sad pretty girl inspires the urge to console, unlike a sad old crone.

Every month there is a moon, gigantic, round, heavy, an omen. IT transits, pauses, continues on and passes out of sight, and I see despair coming towards me like famine. To feel that empty, again, again. I listen to my heart, wave upon wave, salty and red, continuing on and on, marking time.

Its psychic. Its the age. Its chemical.

Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous.

They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing.