Quotes from Margaret Atwood

She writes like an angel, it says of Laura on the back of one of the editions of The Blind Assassin. An American edition, as I recall, with gold scrollwork on the cover: they set a lot of store by angels in those parts. In point of fact angels don't write much. They record sins and the names of the dammed and the saved, or they appear as disembodied hands and scribble warnings on walls. Or they deliver messages, few of which are good news: God be with you is not an unmixed blessing.

I admired her lack of compunction, the courage of her bad manners, the energy of simple rage. Throwing a bag of spaghetti had a simplicity to it, a recklessness, a careless grandeur. It got things over with. I was a long way, then, from being able to do anything like it myself.

She's just jealous, people say, as if jealousy is something minor. But it's not, it's the worst, it's the worst feeling there is—incoherent and confused and shameful, and at the same time self-righteous and focused and hard as glass, like the view through a telescope. A feeling of total concentration, but total powerlessness. Which must be why it inspires so much murder: killing is the ultimate control.

They understood about dreaming, he knew that: they dreamed themselves. Crake hadn't been able to eliminate dreams. We're hard-wired for dreams, he'd said. He couldn't get rid of the singing either. We're hard-wired for singing. Singing and dreams were entwined.

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

My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red. —ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, Maud, 1855.

The ability to concoct plausible lies is a talent not to be underestimated

This is "poetry," this song of the wind across teeth, this message from the flayed tongue to the flayed ear.

Disguise is easier when you're young.

I saw you as another god.

It's possible to go so far in, so far down and back, they could never get you out.

It would make me feel that I have power. But such a feeling would be an illusion, and too risky.