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Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood Quotes

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Famous Margaret Atwood Quotes

“Some of the old diseases that we think are gone - case in point, measles - are back, now that somebody has spread around, in a very wicked way, the idea that these inoculations were making children autistic. Now we're getting outbreaks that are killing children. The end result is, if you create a population that lacks immunity, and diseases are still there, you're going to get outbreaks and you're going to get death.”

IfsThinkingWayChildrenStillsIdeasEndsResultsCasesGoneDiseaseKillingPopulationSpreadWickedAutisticEnd ResultsImmunityOutbreaksMeaslesWicked Ways
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“It's true that there is a rescue thing in people, and not just rescuing the family, which is kind of obvious from a biological point of view. But why is it that some people will jump into a freezing river and swim out to a downed plane for total strangers? What is that about? And it seems to be that it's part of your concept of who you are. That's why some people run into the burning buildings, because if they don't, their concept of who they are will be violated. They wouldn't be who they thought they were.”

PeopleIfsKindSeemsRunningViewsBuildingConceptsRiversWho You AreObviousStrangerPoint Of ViewBurningPlanesSwimRescueFreezingBurning Buildings
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.”

IfsHappensActionNextWomenKnowledgeMorningLaughingDrinkBedConsequenceStonesDareDoomedRuinedForesight
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“Karen wasn't hard, she was soft, too soft. A soft touch. Her hair was soft, her smile was soft, her voice was soft. She was so soft there was no resistance. Hard things sank into her, they went right through her, and if she made a real effort, out the other side. Then she didn't have to see them or hear them, or even touch them.”

IfsMadeRealHardSidesVoiceEffortHairResistanceHard ThingsHer Smile
Book:The Robber Bride: Includes the short story 'I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth'
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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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“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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“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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“There were no men in this painting, but it was about men, the kind who caused women to fall. I did not ascribe any intentions to these men. They were like the weather, they didn't have a mind. They merely drenched you or struck you like lightning and moved on, mindless as blizzards. Or they were like rocks, a line of sharp slippery rocks with jagged edges. You could walk with care along between the rocks, picking your steps, and if you slipped you'd fall and cut yourself, but it was no use blaming the rocks.”

IfsMenMindKindUseCareFallLinesWalksStepsCuttingRocksPaintingBlameMovedIntentionEdgesWeatherLightningMindlessSlipperyMoved OnBlizzardJagged Edge
Book:Two Solicitudes: Conversations
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“What is it the I'll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which isn't yours to bestow. Only a listener, perhaps; only someone who will see me. Don't prettify me though, whatever else you do: I have no wish to be a decorated skull. But I leave myself in your hands. What choice do I have? By the time you read this last page, that- if anywhere- is the only place I will be.”

IfsWantHandsWould BeLastsChoicesAsksWishToo MuchPagesListenersSkulls
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me - drawing on my skin - not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.”

IfsFeelsWritingEndsFacesSkinsWingsDrawingOpeningPensButterflyOld FashionedPencilsFeathersClosingGeeseQuills
Book:Alias Grace: A Novel
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“The male frog in mating season," said Crake, "makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog, one with superior genes. Small male frogs—it's been documented—discover if they position themselves in empty drainpipes, the pipe acts as a voice amplifier and the small frog appears much larger than it really is." So?" So that's what art is for the artist, an empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.”

IfsArtSaidArtistVoicePowerfulPositionArt IsFemaleEmptySeasonsMalesNoiseSuperiorsGenesPipeFrogsGetting LaidMatingAmplifiers
Book:Oryx And Crake
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“A wave of blood goes up to my head, my stomach shrinks together, as if something dangerous has just missed hitting me. It's as if I've been caught stealing, or telling a lie; or as if I've heard other people talking about me, saying bad things about me, behind my back. There's the same flush of shame, of guilt and terror, and of cold disgust with myself. But I don't know where these feelings have come from, what I've done.”

PeopleIfsKnowsDoneFeelingsTogetherLyingBehindsTalkingHeardBloodDangerousColdShameGuiltWaveCaughtTerrorStealingBad ThingsStomachDisgustingHittingShrinksPeople TalkingBehind My BackTalking About MeSaying Bad Things
Book:Cat's Eye
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“What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. Literature is not only a mirror; it is also a map, a geography of the mind. Our literature is one such map, if we can learn to read it as our literature, as the product of who and where we have been. We need such a map desperately, we need to know about here, because here is where we live. For the members of a country or a culture, shared knowledge of their place, their here, is not a luxury but a necessity. Without that knowledge we will not survive.”

IfsKnowsNeedsMindPersonsHas BeensCountryCultureLiteratureLostPositionProductsMembersRelationMirrorsLuxuryMapsTerritoryGeographyLost Person
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“Walking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will discover behind them something that will truly be worth seeing, she feels as if her feet are not on cement at all but on ice. The blade of the skate floats, she knows, on a thin film of water, which it melts by pressure and which freezes behind it. This is the freedom of the present tense, this sliding edge.”

IfsKnowsFeelsTodayPastFilmWaterBehindsSeeingFeetWalkingWindowPressureEdgesStoresIceUsualPeersFloatsBladesTenseFreezeSkatesCementEagernessPresent Tense
Book:Bluebeard's Egg
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“Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city. Maybe night falls because it’s heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes. Wool blanket.”

IfsLooksEyeNightFallBlackLinesCitiesBehindsDarknessSunFireSkyCloudsHeavyEastBurningSmokeDawnFallenRisingSunsetHorizonThickUnseenCurtainsBlanketLiftingWool
Book:The Handmaid's Tale
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“All Creatures know that some must die That all the rest may take and eat; Sooner or later, all transform Their blood to wine, their flesh to meat. But Man alone seeks Vengefulness, And writes his abstract Laws on stone; For this false Justice he has made, He tortures limb and crushes bone. Is this the image of a god? My tooth for yours, your eye for mine? Oh, if Revenge did move the stars Instead of Love, they would not shine.”

IfsKnowsMenWritingMayMadeEyeMovingLawDiesStarsJusticeBloodMinesCreaturesStonesWineShiningBonesRevengeFleshTeethMeatTortureAbstractCrushSooner Or LaterLimbs
Book:The Year Of The Flood
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“He has to find more and better ways of occupying his time. His time, what a bankrupt idea, as if he's been given a box of time belonging to him alone, stuffed to the brim with hours and minutes that he can spend like money. Trouble is, the box has holes in it and the time is running out, no matter what he does with it.”

IfsWayDoeIdeasMatterRunningGivenHoursTroubleMinutesNo Matter WhatBoxesHolesBelongingBetter WaysTime Is Running OutTime Running Out
Book:Oryx And Crake
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