Quotes from Margaret Atwood

You think I didn't hate their pity, their forced kindness? And knowing that no matter what I did, how virtuous I was, or hardworking, I would never be beautiful. Not like her, the one who merely had to sit there to be adored. You wonder why I stabbed the blue eyes of my dolls with pins and pulled their hair out until they were bald? Life isn't fair. Why should I be?

Men are sex machines, said Aunt Lydia, and not much more. They only want one thing. You must learn to manipulate them, for your own good. Lead them around by the nose; that is a metaphor. It's nature's way. It's God's device. It's the way things are.

Remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.

The brain is very protective, it decides what we choose to remember.

Single strand of pearls, wild, not cultured. (Worth it, she said: only the wild ones had souls.)

As for the adverse publicity, they could squelch it at source, since the media Corps controlled what was news and what wasn't. And the Internet was such a jumble of false and true factoids that no one believed what was on it any more, or else they believed all of it, which amounted to the same thing.

I collected enough fragments of the past to make a reconstruction of it, which must have borne as much relation to the real thing as a mosaic portrait would to the original.

Now young lady,' he said to me, 'I'm not going to chastize you personally because I can see you are a nice girl and only the innocent means to this abominable end. But you will be so kind as to give these tracts to your employers. Who can tell but that their hearts may yet be softened? The propagation of drink and of drunkenness to excess is an iniquity, a sin against the Lord.

I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed. There's a lot that doesn't bear thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last.

We must all make sacrifices in order to help other people," she said in a soothing tone. "Men must make sacrifices in war, and women must make sacrifices in other ways. That is how things are divided.

We have learned to see the world in gasps.

What men are most afraid of is not lions, not snakes, not the dark, not women. Not any more. What men are most afraid of is the body of another man. Men's bodies are the most dangerous things on earth.