Margaret Atwood

...how much needless despair has been caused by a series of biological mismatches, a misalignment of the hormones and pheromones? Resulting in the fact that the one you love so passionately won't or can't love you. As a species we're pathetic that way: imperfectly monogamous.

Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.

Those who live alone slide into the habit of vertical eating: why bother with the niceties when there's no one to share or censure? But laxity in one area may lead to derangement in all.

I always thought eating was a ridiculous activity anyway. I'd get out of it myself if I could, though you've got to do it to stay alive, they tell me.

He has to find more and better ways of occupying his time. His time, what a bankrupt idea, as if he's been given a box of time belonging to him alone, stuffed to the brim with hours and minutes that he can spend like money. Trouble is, the box has holes in it and the time is running out, no matter what he does with it.

... all this talking, this rather liquid confessing, was something I didn't think I could ever bring myself to do. It seemed foolhardy to me, like an uncooked egg deciding to to come out of its shell: there would be a risk of spreading out too far, turning into a formless puddle.

If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending... But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one.

But maybe, underneath, she loves him too much. Maybe it's her excessive love that pushes him away.

he might die for her, but living for her would be quite different.

Where to start is the problem, because nothing begins when it begins and nothing's over when it's over, and everything needs a preface: a preface, a postscript, a chart of simultaneous events.

He needed to exist only in the present, without guilt, without expectation.

But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.

Is anything wrong, dear? the old joke went. No, why? You moved. Just don't move.

We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat.

You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.

Because you are never here but always there, I forget not you but what you look like You drift down the street in the rain, your face dissolving, changing shape, the colours running together My walls absorb you, breathe you forth again, you resume yourself, I do not recognize you You rest on the bed watching me watching you, we will never know each other any better than we do now

Nevertheless, blood is thicker than water, as anyone knows who has tasted both.

I suppose it's everyone's fate to be reduced to quaintness by those younger than themselves.

Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly. Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God.

I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.