Quotes from Margaret Atwood

Its racist policies, for instance, were firmly rooted in the pre-Gilead period, and racist fears provided some of the emotional fuel that allowed the Gilead takeover to succeed as well as it did.

I will say you ... You can mean more than one. You can mean thousands. I'm not in immediate danger, I'll say to you. I'll pretend you can hear me. But its no good, because I know you can't.

Is there no end to his disguises, of benevolence?

I sink down into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing. Treacherous ground, my own territory.

The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil. It was like being in an elevator cut loose at the top. Falling, falling, and not knowing when you will hit.

I've 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.

Nothing should be carelessly thrown away, not even wine from sinful places. There was no such thing as garbage, trash, or dirt, only matter that hadn't been put to a proper use.

He can see the point of venison, of killing to eat, but to have a cut-off head on your wall? What does it prove, except that a deer can't pull a trigger?

I want to keep on living, in any form. I resign my body freely, to the uses of others.

Sex and violence, he thinks now. A lot of the songs were about that. We didn't even notice. We thought it was art.

Five members of the heretical sect of Quakers have been arrested, he says, smiling blandly, and more arrests are anticipated.

But hatred and viciousness are addictive.