1,705 Quotes by Margaret Atwood

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.

There is more than one kind of freedom," said Aunt Lydia. "Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.

You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, is what he says. We thought we could do better.Better? I say, in a small voice. How can he think this is better?Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.

We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?

They will not let you have peace, they don't want you to have anything they don't have themselves.

Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.

But 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.Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.

There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt with.

... I feared I might lose my faith. If you've never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying, that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you'll be left all alone. You feel exiled, as if you are lost in a dark wood. It was like the feeling I had when Tabitha died: the world was emptying itself of meaning. Everything was hollow. Everything was withering.