1,705 Quotes by Margaret Atwood

I should have known better than to rely on pills. You can't buy unconsciousness quite so cheaply.

Why do men feel threatened by women?" I asked a male friend of mine. - - "They are afraid women will laugh at them," he said. "Undercut their world view." Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, "Why do women feel threatened by men?" "They're afraid of being killed," they said.

Je lis vite, avec voracité, presque en diagonale, pour essayer de m'en fourrer autant que je peux dans la tête avant la prochaine longue famine. S'il s'agissait de manger, ce serait la gloutonnerie de l'affamé, et s'il s'agissait de sexualité, ce serait une brève et furtive étreinte, debout quelque part dans une ruelle.

All this talking, this rather liquid confessing, was something I didn't think I could ever bring myself to do. It seemed foolhardy to me, like an uncooked egg deciding to to come out of its shell: there would be a risk of spreading out too far, turning into a formless puddle.

I even spent a certain amount of time worrying about the Spiritualist doctrines: If The Other Side was so wonderful, why did the spirits devote most of their messages to warnings? Instead of telling their loved ones to avoid slippery stairs and unsafe cars and starchy foods, they should have been luring them over cliffs and bridges and into lakes, spurring them on to greater feats of intemperance and gluttony, in order to hasten their passage to the brighter shore.

As with so much else, she was convinced that an exception would be made in her case.

Nor does she attend conventions any more: she’s seen enough kids dressed up like vampires and bunnies and Star Trek, and especially like the nastier villains of Alphinland. She really can’t bear one more inept impersonation of Milzreth of the Red Hand – yet another apple-cheeked innocent in quest of his inner wickedness.

Change can be accommodated by any system depending on its rate, Crake used to say. Touch your head to a wall, nothing happens, but if the same head hits the wall at ninety miles an hour, it's red paint. We're in a speed tunnel, Jimmy. When the water's moving faster than the boat, you can't control a thing.

It's okay, mummy's in there lying on the floor. She'll be alright in an hour or so.