Quotes from Margaret Atwood

That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first in your head, and then you make it real.

Things written down can cause a great deal of harm. All too often, people don't consider that.

We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.

There is indeed something delightful about being able to combine obedience and disobedience in the same act.

If you were a song What song would you be? Would you be the voice that sings, Would you be the music? When I am singing this song for you You are not empty air You are here, One breath and then another: You are here with me...

Oblivion is increasingly attractive to the young, and even to the middle-aged, since why retain your brain when no amount of thinking can even begin to solve the problem?

While in a vintage restaurant...the past isn't quaint while you're in it. Only at a safe distance, later, when you see it as decor, not as the shape your life's been squeezed into.

Then she let him lick her fingers for her. He ran his tongue around the small ovals of her nails. This was the closest she could get to him without becoming food: she was in him, or part of her was in part of him. Sex was the other way around: While that was going on, he was in her. I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.

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.

I am like a room where things once happened and now nothing does, except the pollen of the weeds that grow up outside the window, blowing in as dust across the floor.

The heart of Jesus glowed, because it was holy. Holy things glowed in general.

Those who live alone slide into the habit of vertical eating: why bother with the niceties when there's no one to share or censure? But laxity in one area may lead to derangement in all.