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Margaret Atwood Quotes

Total quotes: 88
“Tell me where it hurts, she’d say. Stop howling. Just calm down and show me where.
But some people can’t tell where it hurts. They can’t calm down. They can’t ever stop howling.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Tagged: Pain, expression
“I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.”
— Margaret Atwood, Variation On The Word Sleep
Tagged: Love, Air
“And she finds it difficult to believe — that a person would love her even when she isn’t trying. Trying to figure out what other people need, trying to be worthy.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride
Tagged: Love, Self-Worth
“I’ve learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.”
— Margaret Atwood, Moral Disorder and Other Stories
Tagged: Learning
“After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? Because it is.”
— Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Tagged: The World, beauty, Gratitude, Appreciation, Nature
“I’m working on my own life story. I don’t mean I’m putting it together; no, I’m taking it apart.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Tent
Tagged: Life, Fate, Choices, Decisions
“Forgiveness is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Tagged: forgiveness, Power
“You're scared. But maybe we're stronger than we think we are. ”
— Offred, The Handmaid's Tale, Season 3: Watch Out
Tagged: strength, Women, empowerment, Encouraging
“It’s still you.
It’s still you.”
— Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House
Tagged: Love, Relationship, Special Someone, still
“You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Tagged: Behavior, Feelings, Emotion, Psychology, Mental Health, Self-Control
“Where do you draw the line, between love and greed? We never did know, we always wanted more. We want to take it all in, for one last time, we want to eat the world with our eyes.
Better than the mouth, my darling. Better than the mouth.”
— Margaret Atwood, Good Bones and Simple Murders
Tagged: Love, Greed
“I think that people should carry notebooks with them at all times just for those moments because there’s nothing worse than having that moment and finding that you’re unable to set it down except with a knife on your leg or something.”
— Margaret Atwood
Tagged: Moments, Writing
“She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Tagged: Salvation, Love, Imagination, Hope
“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad
Tagged: Flexibility, Metaphor, Water, Versatile, Adjustments
“The girls in here do two things. They get fucked or they get fucked up.”
— Econowife, The Handmaid's Tale, Season 1: The Bridge
Tagged: Fucked, Intoxicated, fucked up
“Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?”
— Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad (Canongate Myths)
Tagged: Identity, Being Needed, Ego
“You miss this? Lists of made-up problems. No woman was ever rich enough, young enough, pretty enough, good enough.”
— Commander Fred Waterford,
Tagged: Problems, rich, Pretty, young
“Women are human beings, with the full range of saintly and demonic behaviours this entails.”
— Margaret Atwood, Am I a bad feminist?
Tagged: Womanhood, Equality, humanity, Bad Girls, Good Girls
“You can't change anything about this. It's going to end the same no matter you do what so there's no point trying to be tough or brave. Brave isn't any part of this. Everybody breaks.”
— Nick Blaine, The Handmaid's Tale, The Handmaid's Tale Season 1: Late
Tagged: Bravery
“They say I am there to do light housework. Though mostly I am there to be an object of curiosity.”
— Grace Marks, Alias Grace, Season 1: Part 1
Tagged: Curiosity, Housework, role
“'Murderer' is merely brutal. It's like a hammer, or a lump of metal. I'd rather be a murderess than a murderer, if those are the only choices.”
— Grace Marks, Alias Grace, Season 1: Part 1
Tagged: Murder, Brutal, Similie Examples, Choice
“A war among women, as opposed to a war on women, is always pleasing to those who do not wish women well.”
— Margaret Atwood, Am I a bad feminist?
Tagged: Sexist, Misogyny, Intersectional Feminism, Women Hating Women
“The desire to be loved is the last illusion:
Give it up and you will be free.”
— Margaret Atwood, Selected Poems II: 1976- 1986
Tagged: Love, romance, Loved, To be loved, Wanting Love, Desire For Love, poem, Poetry
“Another belief of mine; that everyone my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”
— Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye
Tagged: Belief, Age
“The beauty is an illusion, and also a warning: there’s a dark side to beauty, as with poisonous butterflies.”
— Margaret Atwood, Stone Matress
Tagged: beauty, Illusion, Dark side of Beauty
“Do not let them grind you down. You keep your fucking shit together. You fight!”
— Offred (June Osborne), The Handmaid's Tale, Season 1: The Bridge
Tagged: Fight, perseverance
“When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Tagged: The Past, Nostalgia, Truth, Perception, Memory
“Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.”
— Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye
Tagged: Hatred, Anger, Love
“What we share may be a lot like a traffic accident but we get one another. We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something.”
— Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye
Tagged: Love, Co-dependency, Relationships, Exes, Ex-Lovers
“But I can't stop thinking about the girl in the horror movie who goes down into the basement when the light is out. The girl who thinks her boyfriend with the perfect hair is just playing a sexy prank.”
— Offred (June Osborne),
Tagged: Horror Movies, Boyfriend, Sexy, Pranks, basement
“Is that all you want to be? Liked? Wouldn’t you rather be passionately and voraciously desired?”
— Margaret Atwood, Bodily Harm
Tagged: Passion, likes
“They only show us victories, never defeats. Who wants bad news? Possibly he's an actor.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Tagged: Bad News, Defeats, Propaganda
“Screw poetry, it’s you I want,
your taste, rain
on you, mouth on your skin.”
— Margaret Atwood, Late Night
Tagged: Love Poem, I Miss You, I Want You
“Someone else planted a bomb in her car but it went off too early. Though some people said she'd put the bomb in her own car for sympathy. That's how hot things were getting.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Tagged: Unrest, Politics
“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.
We lived in the gaps between the stories.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Tagged: Freedom, Stories, People, Life
“They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing.”
— Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Tagged: Learning, Education, Children, Creativity, invention
“There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.”
— Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam
Tagged: Stories, Life, Narratives
“When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things get in that ought to be shut out. The locks lose their powers. The guards go to sleep. The passwords fail.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin: A Novel
Tagged: Pain, Sadness, self
“I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.”
— Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle
Tagged: The Past, Nostalgia, Moving On, Forgetting
“We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.”
— Margaret Atwood, Dancing Girls
Tagged: Love, Addiction, Relationships
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