Quotes by Margaret Atwood

I didnt much like it, this grudge-holding against the past.

you cant change the past,Aunt Lou used to say.Oh, but I wanted to;that was the one thing I really wanted to do

I and the girl in the picture have ceased to be the same person. I am her outcome, the result of the life she once lived headlong; whereas she, if she can be said to exist at all, is composed only of what I remember. I have the better view - I can see her clearly, most of the time. But even if she knew enough to look, she cant see me at all.

You cynical shit, he told himself. Then he started to weep.Dont be so fucking sentimental, Crake used to tell him. But why not? Why shouldnt he be sentimental? It wasnt as if there was anyone around to question his

Here the children have a custom. After the celebration of evil they take those vacant heads that shone once with such anguish and glee and throw them over the bridge, watching the smash, orange, as they hit below, We were standing underneath when you told it. People do that with themselves when they are finished, light scooped out. He landed here, you said, marking it with your foot.You wouldnt do it that way, empty, you wouldnt wait, you would jump with the light still in you.

Ger says that Kat has a tendency to push things to extremes, to go over the edge, merely from a juvenile desire to shock, which is hardly a substitute for wit. One of these days, he says, she will go way too far. Too far for him, is what he means.

You can think clearly only with your clothes on.

I wonderif I should let my hair go greyso my advice will be better.

Pink is supposed to weaken your enemies, make them go soft on you, which must be why its used for baby girls. Its a wonder the military hasnt got on to this.

I’m not mad because I’m a woman,” I say. “I’m mad because you’re an asshole.

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

Perhaps he was merely being friendly. Perhaps he saw the look on my face and mistook it for something else. Really what I wanted was the cigarette.

She’s a lean vixen: I can seethe ribs, the slytrickster’s eyes, filled with longing and desperation, the skinnyfeet, adept at lies.Why encourage the notionof virtuous poverty?It’s only an excusefor zero charity.Hunger corrupts, and absolute hungercorrupts absolutely,

Theres an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.

With the young writers now it’s F and C all day long, which he, personally, finds boring.

Writers are much better behaved nowadays, for a couple of reasons. Once upon a time nobody was thinking of a career, unless you lived in New York, so there wasn’t as much pressure to present a respectable exterior. And secondly, there was no social media. So if you were found face down on the floor – people did do that quite a bit; usually men, but not always – or fell through plate glass windows or got into scrapes, it became a rumour, and rumours are hard to pin down.

Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.

I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and just as complicated. But sometimes its hard to put up with.

Falling in love... how could he have made such light of it? Sneered even. As if it was trivial for us, a frill, a whim. It was, on the contrary, heavy going. It was the central thing, the way you understood yourself.

Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it really isnt about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isnt about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe its about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.