Quotes by Margaret Atwood

Shes just jealous, people say, as if jealousy is something minor. But its not, its the worst, its the worst feeling there is - incoherent and confused and shameful, and at the same time self-righteous and focused and hard as glass, like a view through a telescope. A feeling of total concentration, but total powerlessness.

If your not annoying somebody, youre not alive.

The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.

Why is it always such a surprise? thinks Toby. The moon. Even though we know its coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush.

There were a few other moves of his fathers he could do without as well - the sucker punches, the ruffling of the hair, the way of pronouncing the word son, in a slightly deeper voice. This hearty way of talking was getting worse, as if his father were auditioning for the role of Dad, but without much hope.

Who is to say that prayers have any effect? On the other hand, who is to say they dont? I picture the gods, diddling around on Olympus, wallowing in the nectar and ambrosia and the aroma of burning bones and fat, mischievous as a pack of ten-year-olds with a sick cat to play with and a lot of time on their hands. Which prayer shall we answer today? they ask one another. Lets cast the dice! Hope for this one, despair for that one, and while were at it, lets destroy the life of that woman over there by having sex with her in the form of a crayfish! I think they pull a lot of their pranks because theyre bored.

Don’t interfere with false gods, you’ll get the gold paint all over your hands.

I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight.

Galleries are frightening places, places of evaluation, of judgement.

To want is to have a weakness.

You need to give money when someone gives you a knife. So the bad luck wont cut you. I wouldnt like it for you to be cut by the bad luck, Jimmy.

I want, I don’t want.How can one live with such a heart?

To take that risk, to offer life and remain alive, open yourself like this and become whole.

She wasnt stupid. She just didnt want to put her neuron power into long sentences.

Every war is the war for whoevers lived through it.

Ive forgotten about these things all winter, but here they are again, and when I see them I remember them, I know them, I greet them as if they are home.

So by the time the morning came, Odysseus and I were indeed friends, as Odysseus had promised we would be. Or let me put it another way: I myself had developed friendly feelings towards him - more than that, loving and passionate ones - and he behaved as if he reciprocated them. Which is not quite the same thing.

Some people write letters, in the library.

The internet is 95 percent porn and spam

Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.