“ I am like a room where things once happened and now nothing does, except the pollen of the weeds that grow up outside the window, blowing in as dust across the floor. Margaret Atwood
“ How strange to remember typewriters, with their jammed keys and snarled ribbons and the smudgy carbon paper for copies. Margaret Atwood
“ Here's a health to our Captain, so gallant and freeWhether stuck on a rock or asleep 'neath a treeOr rolled in the arms of some nymph of the seaWhich is where we would all like to be, man! Margaret Atwood
“ He compiled lists of old words too – words of a precision and suggestiveness that no longer had a meaningful application in today’s world, or toady’s world, as Jimmy sometimes deliberately misspelled… Margaret Atwood
“ Everything in his life was temporary, ungrounded. Language itself had lost its solidity; it had become thin, contingent, slippery, a viscid film on which he was sliding around like an eyeball on a pla… Margaret Atwood
“ Every ending is arbitrary, because the end is where you write The end. A period, a dot of punctuation, a point of stasis. A pinprick in the paper: you could put your eye to it and see through, to the… Margaret Atwood
“ Envoiwe had no voicewe had no namewe had no choicewe had one faceone face the samewe took the blameit was no fairbut now w're herewe're all here toothe same as youand now we followyou, we find younow,… Margaret Atwood
“ Encyclopedia-selling was known to be the last resort of the feckless, the inept, and the desperate Margaret Atwood
“ Each of the five tribes claims to have been the victorious attacker. Each recalls the slaughter with relish. Each believes it was ordained by their own god as righteous vengeance, because of the unhol… Margaret Atwood
“ Death makes me hungry. Maybe it's because I've been emptied; or maybe it's the body's way of seeing to it that I remain alive. Margaret Atwood
“ Charis tried not to mind, since nothing that was or had been would perish, and the farm was still inside her, it was still hers because places belonged to the people who loved them. Margaret Atwood
“ Can a single ant be said to be alive, in any meaningful sense of the word, or does it only have relevance in terms of its anthill? Margaret Atwood
“ Calling a piece of short fiction a tale removes it at least slightly from the realm of mundane works and days, as it evokes the world of the folk tale, the wonder tale, and the long-ago teller of tale… Margaret Atwood
“ By now you know: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, Take me to your leaders. Even I--unused to your ways though I am--would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings… Margaret Atwood
“ By extension, anyone who liked smelling the daisies, and having daisies to smell, and eating mercury-free fish, and who objected to giving birth to three-eyed infants via the toxic sludge in their dri… Margaret Atwood
“ By contrast, no one in Alphinland ever demanded a blowjob. But then, no one in Alphinland had a toilet either. Toilets weren’t necessary. Why waste time on that kind of routine bodily function when th… Margaret Atwood
“ But the adjectives change, said Jimmy. Nothing’s worse than last year’s adjectives. Margaret Atwood
“ But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot. Margaret Atwood
