1,705 Quotes by Margaret Atwood

What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves -- our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies.

This murdered girl troubles me. After the first shock, nobody at school says much about her. Even Cordelia does not want to talk about her. It’s as if this girl has done something shameful, herself, by being murdered.

He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever.

Boys with their first beards can be a thorough pain in the neck.

We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young.

I won't fatten them in cages, though. I won't ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won't change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won't drain out their life's blood. They can do all those things for themselves.

Ah men,why do you want all this attention?I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutelynecessary. What do you have to offer meI can't find otherwiseexcept humiliation? Which I no longerneed.

Life is not about hair...hair is about life. It is the flame of the body’s candle, and as it dwindles the body shrinks and melts away.

... and nobody needed two mothers, did they? Oh yes they did, thinks Snowman. Oh yes, they really did...