Quotes from Margaret Atwood

At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.

There had been something willed about it though, his ignorance. Or not willed, exactly: structured. He'd grown up in walled spaces, and then he had become one. He had shut things out.

But what is a memorial, when you come right down to it, but a commemoration of wounds endured? Endured, and resented. Without memory, there can be no revenge.

The ways of God are not the ways of man, and they are most emphatically not the ways of woman.

Think of me as a guide. Think of yourself as a wanderer in a dark wood. It's about to get darker.

It's somewhat daunting to reflect that Hell is -- possibly -- the place where you are stuck in your own personal narrative for ever, and Heaven is -- possibly -- the place where you can ditch it, and take up wisdom instead.

I wait, for the household to assemble. Household: that is what we are. The Commander is the head of the household. The house is what he holds. To have and to hold, till death do us part. The hold of a ship. Hollow.

I already told you," said Adam. "There is no need to swear." "Sorry, it just fucking slipped out," said Zeb.

Yes, it does feel deceptively safer with two; but Thou is a slippery character. Every Thou I've known has had a way of going missing. They skip town or turn perfidious, or else the drop like flies and then where are you?

When in doubt, when flat on your back, you can look at the ceiling. Who knows what you may see, up there? Funeral wreaths and angels, constellations of dust, stellar or otherwise, the puzzles left by spiders. There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.

We are containers, it's only the insides of our bodies that are important.

The living bird is not its labeled bones.