Margaret Atwood Quotes

Two-thirty comes during Testifying. It's Janine, telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion.But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up one plump finger. Her fault,...

He said, I won't have one of those things in the house. It gives a young girl a false notion of beauty, not to mention anatomy. If a real woman was built like that she'd fall on her face.She said, If...

Looking down, she became aware of the water, which was covered with a film of calcinous hard-water particles of dirt and soap, and of the body that was sitting in it, somehow no longer quite her own....

She was afraid of losing her shape, spreading out, not being able to contain herself any longer, beginning (that would be worst of all) to talk a lot, to tell everybody, to cry.

We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we're about to do something harmful, to someone else. But as Mr. Erskine also pointed out, Eros with his bow and arrows is not the only bl...

She doesn't think it's a good idea to know the future, because you can hardly ever change it, so why suffer twice?

He was the kind of boy for whom cleverness was female.

He said, I won't have one of those things in the house. It gives a young girl a false notion of beauty, not to mention anatomy. If a real woman was built like that she'd fall on her face.She said, If...

If he had known unstructured space is a delugeand stocked his log house-boat with all the animals even the wolves, he might have floated. But obstinate hestated, The land is solid and stamped, watchin...

Helen of Troy Does Counter DancingThe world is full of womenwho'd tell me I should be ashamed of myselfif they had the chance. Quit dancing.Get some self-respectand a day job.Right. And minimum wage,a...

I could end this with a moral,as if this were a fable about animals,though no fables are really about animals.

The perennial adolescent riposte. I cared, of course. I cared what people thought. I always did care. Unlike Laura, I have never had the courage of my convictions.

Was she in any way like us? thinks Tony. Or, to put it the other way around: Are we in any way like her?

Lambhood and tigerishness may be found in either gender, and in the same individual at different times.

If anyone else told her to lower her voice, Roz would know what to do: scream louder.

The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.

Art is long and life is brief and mortality looms.

How shrunk, how dwindled, in our timesCreation's mighty seed

Red FoxThe red fox crosses the iceintent on none of my business.It's winter and slim pickings.I stand in the bushy cemetery,pretending to watch birds,but really watching the foxwho could care less.She...

Breasts were one thing: they were in front, where you could have some control over them. Then there were bums, which were behind, and out of sight, and thus more lawless. Apart from loosely gathered s...