Margaret Atwood Quotes (276 Quotes)

Nevertheless, blood is thicker than water, as anyone knows who has tasted both.

There's nothing like a shovel full of dirt to encourage literacy.

Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it's much the same.

But who can remember pain, once it's over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

A prison does not only lock its inmates inside, it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.

A wave of blood goes up to my head, my stomach shrinks together, as if something dangerous has just missed hitting me. It's as if I've been caught stealing, or telling a lie; or as if I've heard other people talking about me, saying bad things about me, behind my back. There's the same flush of shame, of guilt and terror, and of cold disgust with myself. But I don't know where these feelings have come from, what I've done.

In my dreams of this city I am always lost.

Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.

He feels the need to hear a human voiceùa fully human voice like his own. Sometimes he laughs like a hyena or roars like a lionùhis idea of a hyena his idea of a lion.

The proper study of Mankind is Everything.

Blondes are like white mice, you only find them in cages. They wouldn't last long in nature. They're too conspicuous.

Paper isn't important. It's the words on them that are important.

They were new money, without a doubt: so new it shrieked. Their clothes looked as it they'd covered themselves in glue, then rolled around in hundred-dollar bills.

Wild geese fly south, creaking like anguished hinges; along the riverbank the candles of the sumacs burn dull red. It's the first week of October. Season of woolen garments taken out of mothballs; of nocturnal mists and dew and slippery front steps, and late-blooming slugs; of snapdragons having one last fling; of those frilly ornamental pink-and-purple cabbages that never used to exist, but are all over everywhere now.

Because you may think a bed is a peaceful thing, Sir, and to you it may mean rest and comfort and a good night's sleep. But it isn't so for everyone; and there are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed.

But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.

It has thrown off its disguise as a meal and has revealed itself to me for what it is, a large dead bird. I'm eating a wing. It's the wing of a tame turkey, the stupidest bird in the world, so stupid it can't even fly any more. I am eating lost flight.

We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat.

He has to find more and better ways of occupying his time. His time, what a bankrupt idea, as if he's been given a box of time belonging to him alone, stuffed to the brim with hours and minutes that he can spend like money. Trouble is, the box has holes in it and the time is running out, no matter what he does with it.

The prospect of his future life stretched before him like a sentence; not a prison sentence but a long-winded sentence with a lot of unnecessary subordinate clauses, as he was soon in the habit of quipping during Happy Hour pickup time at the local campus bars and pubs. He couldnÆt say he was looking forward to it, this rest-of-his-life.

But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion. She renders herself up, is blotted out; enters the darkness of her own body, forgets her name. Immolation is what she wants, however briefly. To exist without boundaries.

Perhaps they were looking for passion; perhaps they delved into this book as into a mysterious parcel - a gift box at the bottom of which, hidden in layers of rustling tissue paper, lay something they'd always longed for but couldn't ever grasp.

Things might have been different if she hadn't been able to drift; if she'd had to concentrate on her next meal, instead of dwelling on all the injuries she felt we'd done her. An unearned income encourages self-pity in those already prone to it.

Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. They hurt themselves instead; or else they do it so the guy doesn't even know he's been hurt until much later. Then he finds out. Then his dick falls off.

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

A word after a word after a word is power.

The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.

The basic Female body comes with the following accessories garter belt, panti-girdle, crinoline, camisole, bustle, brassiere, stomacher, chemise, virgin zone, spike heels, nose ring, veil, kid gloves, fishnet stockings, fichu, bandeau, Merry Widow, weepers, chokers, barrettes, bangles, beads, lorgnette, feather boa, basic black, compact, Lycra stretch one-piece with modesty panel, designer peignoir, flannel nightie, lace teddy, bed, head.

The story as told in The Odyssey doesn't hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.

. . . time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee. . . . I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

That, or a bleary
hopeless love.

I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.

Oh yes: And save me from death.

Sons branch out, but one woman leads to another.

It's necessary to reserve a secret vice.

Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings. To me it's the latter, so I sign up.

The Orange prize has been pivotal in the careers of many women writers - it's given them that extra push, and that extra dollop of confidence.

War is what happens when language fails.

Once upon a time you could wander around one country, then the next and then maybe you'd go to England or wherever. Now they all want you to do it at the same time and you can't. It's just not physically possible.

She even had a kind of special position among men she was an exception, she fitted none of the categories they commonly used when talking about girls she wasn't a cock-teaser, a cold fish, an easy lay or a snarky bitch she was an honorary person. She had grown to share their contempt for most women.

People are now familiar with this kind of interaction. They may even have a more intimate moment that way.

The main thing is to keep yourself awake on writing

They all disowned their parents long ago, the way you are supposed to

If a stranger taps you on the ass and says, 'How's the little lady today' you will probably cringe. But if he's an American, he's only being friendly.

If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

When I finally went to school I had to adjust to other girls and learn their fiendish ways. Having learnt them, I turned them on all and sundry.

Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.

A divorce is like an amputation you survive, but there's less of you.

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.