Memorable quotations from the maestro
With only one day to spare, I’m scrambling to catch Week Four of MARM (hosted by Naomi). I have been rifling through old jotters, discoloured clippings and scribbled-on Post-it notes left inside books to share with you a mere handful of my favourite Atwood quotations. There are so very many from which to choose but I’ve dwindled it down to the most succinct, amusing and epigrammatic:
THE QUOTATIONS
“Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.”
– The Handmaid’s Tale
“If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?”
– Power Politics
“Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.”
– Surfacing
“He’s pretty good – he mostly just keeps out of the way.”
– On her partner, Graeme Gibson
“If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.”
– Alias Grace
“I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.”
– Lady Oracle
“Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?”
– The Penelopiad
“Our biggest moral debt is to the environment. Take-take-take, nothing given back.”
– Maclean’s Interview: Margaret Atwood
“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.”
– The Blind Assassin
“The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner.”
– Morning in the Burned House
“First wave, the vote. Second wave, the image. Now it’s about violence and rape and death: we’ve got down to the nitty-gritty.”
– On feminism
“War is what happens when language fails.”
– The Robber Bride
“Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.”
– Cat’s Eye
“Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.”
– The MaddAddam Trilogy
“I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.”
– Dancing Girls
Menopause. A pause while you reconsider men.
– Wilderness Tips
“Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.”
– The Blind Assassin