1,705 Quotes by Margaret Atwood

I could end this with a moral,as if this were a fable about animals,though no fables are really about animals.

Think of yourselves as pearls. We, sitting in our rows, eyes down, we make her salivate morally. We are hers to define, we must suffer her adjectives. I think about pearls. Pearls are congealed oyster spit.

More and more I feel like a letter—deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one.

Pearls are congealed oyster spit.

Nobody wanted to be sexless, but nobody wanted to be nothing but sex.

Nature is an expert in cost-benefit analysis,' she says. 'Although she does her accounting a little differently. As for debts, she always collects in the long run...

Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.

I follow suit, said the lion, vacating his coat of arms and movie logos; and the eagle said, Get me off this flag.

Lilies used to be a movie theatre, before. Students went there a lot; every spring they had a Humphrey Bogart festival, with Lauren Bacall or Katherine Hepburn, women on their own, making up their minds. They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word 'undone'. These women could not be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose.