Quotes by Margaret Atwood

You know 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 sounded fraudulent to him and hed been ashamed to pronounce them.

That’s what you get for being food.

Then we had the irises, rising beautiful and cool on their tall stalks, like blown glass, like pastel water momentarily frozen in a splash, light blue, light mauve, and the darker ones, velvet and purple, black cats ears in the sun, indigo shadow, and the bleeding hearts, so female in shape it was a surprise theyd not long since been rooted out. There is something subversive about this garden of Serenas, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.

There is something subversive about this garden of Serenas, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.

A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

It is shocking how many crimes the Bible contains. The Governors wife should cut them all out and paste them into her scrapbook.

People change, though, especially after they are dead.

But then it came to me that who I really am is a person who doesnt need to know who he really is, in the usual sense. What does it mean, anyway - family background and so forth? People use it mostly as an excuse for their own snobbery, or else their failings. Im free of the temptation, thats all. Im free of the strings. Nothing ties me down.

But if Crake wanted her to stay longer on any given night, do it again maybe, shed make some excuse—jet lag, a headache, something plausible. Her inventions were seamless, she was the best poker-faced liar in the world, so there would be a kiss goodbye for stupid Crake, a smile, a wave, a closed door, and the next minute there she would be, with Jimmy.

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasnt even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasnt even an enemy you could put your finger on.

They seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society dying of too much choice.

I am a believer in sensible choices, so different from many of my own. Also in sensible names for children.

Where were we? Ive forgotten. He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever.Right. Yes. The usual choices.

At some indeterminate point in their life cycles, they cause themselves to be placed in artificial stone or wooden cocoons, or chrysalises. They have an idea that they will someday emerge from these in an altered state, which they symbolize with carvings of themselves with wings. However, we did not observe that any had actually done so.

I did believe, at first, that I wanted only justice. I thought my heart was pure. We do like to have such good opinions of our motives when were about to do something harmful, to someone else. But as Mr. Erskine also pointed out, Eros with his bow and arrows is not the only blind god. Justitia is the other one. Clumsy blind gods with edged weapons: Justitia totes a sword, which, coupled with her blindfold, is a pretty good recipe for cutting yourself.

I used to jog but its bad for the knees. Too much beta carotene turns you orange, too much calcium gives you kidney stones. Health kills.

Money isnt the only thing that must flow and circulate in order to have good value: good turns and gifts must flow and circulate . . . for any social system to remain in balance.

The male frog, in mating season, said Crake, makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog, one with superior genes. Small male frogs - its been documented - discover that if they position themselves in empty drainpipes, the pipe acts as a voice amplifier, and the small frog appears much larger than it really is.So?So thats what art is, for the artist, said Crake. An empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.Your analogy falls down when it comes to female artists, said Jimmy. Theyre not in it to get laid. Theyd gain no biological advantage from amplifying themselves, since potential mates would be deterred rather than attracted by this sort of amplification. Men arent frogs, they dont want women who are ten times bigger than them.Female artists are biologically confused, said Crake.

Thats the kind of stories I know. Sad ones. Anyway, taken to its logical conclusion, every story is sad, because at the end everyone dies.

What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed up against a wall, everything a huge foreground, of details, close-ups, hairs, the weave of the bedsheet, the molecules of the face. Your own skin like a map, a diagram of futility, criscrossed with tiny roads that lead nowhere. Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be.