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Margaret Atwood

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Famous Margaret Atwood Quotes

“The world is being run by people my age, men my age, with falling-out hair and health worries, and it frightens me. When the leaders were older than me I could believe in their wisdom, I could believe they had transcended rage and malice and the need to be loved. Now I know better. I look at the faces in newspapers, in magazines, and wonder: what greeds, what furies drive them on?”

PeopleKnowsMenWorldNeedsBelieveLooksRunningAgeFacesFallLeaderWonderWorryHairGreedRageNewspapersMagazinesFuryMalice
Book:Cat's Eye
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“Well. Then we had the irises, rising beautiful and cool on their tall stalks, like blown glass, like pastel water momentarily frozen in a splash, light blue, light mauve, and the darker ones, velvet and purple, black cat's ears in the sun, indigo shadow, and the bleeding hearts, so female in shape it was a surprise they'd not long since been rooted out. There is something subversive about this garden of Serena's, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.”

IfsWellsHeartLongLightBeautifulBlackWaterSunHeardShapesShadowFemaleGardenCatEarsBlueSurpriseGlassesRisingTallBuriedRootedFrozenPurpleBleedingStalkingSubversiveVelvetBurstingClamorIrisesIndigoBlack CatBleeding HeartPastelLight Blue
Book:The Handmaid's Tale
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“No more photos. Surely there are enough. No more shadows of myself thrown by light onto pieces of paper, onto squares of plastic. No more of my eyes, mouths, noses, moods, bad angles. No more yawns, teeth, wrinkles. I suffer from my own multiplicity. Two or three images would have been enough, or four, or five. That would have allowed for a firm idea: This is she. As it is, I'm watery, I ripple, from moment to moment I dissolve into my other selves. Turn the page: you, looking, are newly confused. You know me too well to know me. Or not too well: too much.”

KnowsWellsHas BeensTwoIdeasSelfEnoughMomentsLightEyeSufferingTurnsThreeMy OwnFiveToo MuchPiecesFourPaperPagesMouthsShadowMoodTeethFirmNosesConfusedThrownSquaresPlasticKnow MeAngleWrinklesRippleMultiplicity
Book:The Tent
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“I thought everyone would be familiar with this figure: if I'd studied a thing in school I assumed it was general knowledge. I hadn't yet discovered that I lived in a sort of transparent balloon, drifting over the world without making much contact with it, and that the people I knew appeared to me at a different angle from the one at which they appeared to themselves; and that the reverse was also true. I was smaller to others, up there in my balloon, than I was to myself. I was also blurrier.”

PeopleIfsWorldDifferentWould BeSchoolFiguresFamiliarContactReverseAngleTransparentDriftingBalloonsDifferent AnglesGeneral Knowledge
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“She wasn't ready to settle down, she told her friends. That was one way of putting it. Another was would have been that she had not found anyone to settle down with. There had been several men in her life, but they hadn't been convincing. They'd been somewhat like her table - quickly acquired, brightened up a little, but temporary. The time for that kind of thing was running out, however. She was tired of renting.”

MenWayLoveKindLittlesHas BeensRunningFoundReadyTablesTiredOne WaySettlingTemporaryConvincingLike HerSettling DownReady To Settle Down
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. ...Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.”

ThinkingStoriesRunningFightingDecentThrownThrowingPacksSentimentalEscapingTamingDrivelPacks Of WolvesWolf Packs
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down.”

MenWayWantHumansSoulEnoughLightUsedNightLeftWalksBehindsCasesWanderFasterLeft BehindHuman SoulHere And ThereMarshes
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“A Paradox, the doughnut hole. Empty space, once, but now they've learned to market even that. A minus quantity; nothing, rendered edible. I wondered if they might be used-metaphorically, of course-to demonstrate the existence of God. Does naming a sphere of nothingness transmute it into being?”

IfsDoeMightUsedCoursesSpaceExistenceFoodEmptyHolesParadoxSpheresQuantityNothingnessEmpty SpaceMinusExistence Of GodDoughnut
Book:The Blind Assassin: A Novel
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“Was this a betrayal, or was it an act of courage? Perhaps both. Neither one involves forethought: such things take place in an instant, in an eyeblink. This can only be because they have been rehearsed by us already, over and over, in silence and darkness; in such silence, such darkness, that we are ignorant of them ourselves. Blind but sure-footed, we step forward as if into a remembered dance.”

IfsHas BeensSilenceStepsDarknessBlindBetrayalIgnorantRememberedInstantSteps ForwardActs Of CourageForethought
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“Anything that suffers and dies instead of us is Christ; if they didn't kill birds and fish they would have killed us. The animals die that we may live, they are substitute people, hunters in the fall killing the deer, that is Christ also. And we eat them, out of cans or otherwise; we are eaters of death, dead Christ-flesh resurrecting inside us, granting us life. Canned Spam, canned Jesus, even the plants must be Christ.”

PeopleIfsMaySufferingDiesFallJesusChristAnimalBirdPlantKillingFishesFleshSubstitutesHuntersDeerSpam
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.”

WantWellsI CanDoneMightLyingMy OwnStupidHugeDepressionHappeningsFaultsWaveSelf WorthEmptinessWrongBedroomNothingnessCurtainsDrowningDetachmentInadequateWashingNumbnessBad MoodSluggishLife Is Not Worth LivingFeeling EmptyWhat Did I Do Wrong
Book:Cat's Eye
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