Quotes by Margaret Atwood

In the desert there is no sign that says, Thou shalt not eat stones.

Experiences were what you got when you couldn’t get what you wanted.

Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.

You all right? he said again.I didnt love him, I was far away from him, it was as though I was seeing him through a smeared window or glossy paper; he didnt belong here. But he existed, he deserved to be alive. I was wishing I could tell him how to change so he could get there, the place where I was.Yes, I said. I touched him on the arm with my hand. My hand touched his arm. Hand touched arm. Language divides us into fragments, I wanted to be whole.

He put his arms around me. We were both feeling miserable. How were we to know we were happy, even then? Because we at least had that: arms, around.

Im sad now, the way were talking is infinitely sad: faded music, faded paper flowers, worn satin, an echo of an echo. All gone away, no longer possible.

Every child should have love, every person should have it. She herself would rather have had her mothers love - the love she still continued to believe in, the love that had followed her through the jungle in the form of a bird so she would not be too frightened or lonely.

Why do we want other people to like us, even if we dont really care about them all that much?

Our problem right now is that were so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia theres a little utopia.

Also she went in for culture, which gave her a certain moral authority. It wouldnt now; but people believed, then, that culture could make you better - a better person. They believed it could uplift you, or the women believed it. They hadnt yet seen Hitler at the opera house.

Girls did that then – knocked themselves out to support some man’s notion of his own genius. What was Gavin doing to help pay the rent? Not much, though she suspected him of dealing pot on the side. Once in a while they even smoked some of that, though not often, because it made Constance cough. It was all very romantic.

I need to remember what they look like. I try to hold them still behind my eyes, their faces, like pictures in an album. But they wont stay still for me, they move, theres a smile and its gone, their features curl and bend as if the papers burning, blackness eats them. A glimpse, a pale shimmer on the air; a glow, aurora, dance of electrons, then a face again, faces. But they fade, though I stretch out my arms towards them, they slip away from me, ghosts at daybreak. Back to wherever they are. Stay with me, I want to say. But they wont.

It disturbs me that he can remember some of these things about himself, but not others; that the things hes lost or misplaced exist now only for me. If hes forgotten so much, what have I forgotten?

An odd thing souvenir-hunting: now becomes then even while it is still now.

A place with no handholds,no landmarks,no past at all:That would have been too much like dying

If someone wants to suck your toes, those toes should be worth sucking.

Life is warped. Im just in sync.

I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked; as I never was when I was not one.

I love you. Youre the only one. She isnt the first woman hes ever said that to. He shouldnt have used it up so much earlier in his life, he shouldnt have treated it like a tool, a wedge, a key to open women. By the time he got around to meaning it, the words had sounded fraudulent to him and hed been ashamed to pronounce them.