Quotes from Margaret Atwood

The pain gave me something definite to think about, something immediate. It was something to hold onto.

know what you mean, we'd say. Or, a quaint expression you sometimes hear, still, from older people: I hear where you're coming from, as if the voice itself were a traveler, arriving from a distant place. Which it would be, which it is.

You shouldn't have forged my handwriting," I said to Laura privately. "I couldn't forge Richard's. It's too different from ours. Yours was a lot easier." "Handwriting is a personal thing. It's like stealing.

The bathrobe was magenta, a colour that still makes him anxious whenever he sees it.

I long for periods without saying anything at all. I can be free of words now, I can lapse back into wordlessness, I can sink back into the rhythyms of transience as if into bed.

I watched your snapshot fade for twenty years.

I take back what you have stolen, and in your languages I announce I am now nameless. My true name is a growl.

A rebuke, a palpable rebuke! How dare she? He was already middle-aged when she was born! He could have been her father! He could have been her child molester!

it is better to journey than to arrive, as long as we journey in firm faith and for selfless ends.

For a whole month they'd had to play Barbarian Stomp (See If You Can Change History!). One side had the cities and the riches and the other side had the hordes, and — usually but not always — the most viciousness. Either the barbarians stomped the cities or else they got stomped, but you had to start out with the historical disposition of energies and go on from there.

Sometimes he gets high, on the pot that circulates as freely as cigarettes did once. He thinks he should be enjoying this experience more than he actually does.

I didn't want you to feel defenseless in the face of life. Life can be harsh. I wanted you to feel protected, and to know that there was a greater power watching over you. That the Universe was taking a personal interest.