1,705 Quotes by Margaret Atwood

No one wants to die," said Becka. "But some people don't want to live in any of the ways that are allowed.

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

The north smells different from the city: clearer, thinner. You can see farther. A sawmill, a hill of sawdust, the teepee shape of a sawdust burner; the smokestacks of the copper smelters, the rocks around them bare of trees, burnt-looking, the heaps of blackened slag: I’ve forgotten about these things all winter, but here they are again, and when I see them I remember them, I know them, I greet them as if they are home.

Me estiro, pues, dentro de la habitación, bajo el ojo de escayola del techo, detrás de las cortinas blancas, entre las sábanas, y me deslizo dentro de mi propio tiempo, abandonando el ritmo que nos marcan. Aunque esto también forma parte del ritmo, y yo no estoy fuera de él.

Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.

Snowman wakes before dawn.

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

I say "her", because I don't recall having been present, not in any meaningful sense of the word. I and the girl in the picture have ceased to be the same person. I am her outcome, the result of the life she once lived headlong; whereas she, if she can be said to exist at all, is composed only of what I remember. I have the better view - I can see her clearly, most of the time. But even if she knew enough to look, she can't see me at all.

I began to forget myself in the middle of sentences.