“ The fact is that I hate this city. I've hated it so long I can hardly remember feeling any other way about it. Margaret Atwood
“ Strange how we decorate pain.These ribbons, for instance,and the small hard teardrops of blood.Who are they for?Do we think the dead care? Margaret Atwood
“ So many crucial events take place behind people’s backs, when they aren’t in a position to watch: birth and death, for instance. And the temporary oblivion of sex. Don’t even think about it, he tells… Margaret Atwood
“ She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation.In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. What he said… Margaret Atwood
“ Sex and violence, he thinks now. A lot of the songs were about that. We didn't even notice. We thought it was art. Margaret Atwood
“ Part of what impelled him was stubbornness; resentment, even. The system had filed him among the rejects, and what he was studying was considered—at the decision-making levels, the levels of real powe… Margaret Atwood
“ One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope.In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping… Margaret Atwood
“ On my Tree of Paradise, I intend to put a border of snakes entwined; they will look like vines or just a cable pattern to others, as I will make the eyes very small, but they will be snakes to me; as… Margaret Atwood
“ Now she imagines him dreaming. She imagines him dreaming of her, as she is dreaming of him. Through a sky the color of wet slate they fly towards each other on dark invisible wings, searching, searchi… Margaret Atwood
“ Now maybe I wouldn't do it, but I was a child then, said Oryx more softly. Why are you so angry? I don't buy it, said Jimmy. Where was her rage, how far down was it buried, what did he have to do to d… Margaret Atwood
“ Looking back on his life, he sees himself spread out on the earth like a giant covered in tiny threads that have held him down. Tiny threads of petty cares and small concerns, and fears he took seriou… Margaret Atwood
“ It's kind of shocking to hear Toby called a babe; sort of like calling God a studmuffin. Margaret Atwood
“ It is the strict adherence to daily routine that tends towards the maintenance of good morale and the preservation of sanity, he says out loud. Margaret Atwood
“ I won't fatten them in cages, though. I won't ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won't change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won't drain out their life's blood. They can do all th… Margaret Atwood
“ I remember a television program I once saw; a rerun, made years before. I must have been seven or eight, too young to understand it. It was the sort of thing my mother liked to watch: historical, educ… Margaret Atwood
