Explore Quotes by Margaret Atwood

expectation isn't the same as desire

She had no images of this love. She could offer no anecdotes. It was a belief rather than a memory.

Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.

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

One and one and one and one doesn't equal four. Each one remains unique, there is no way of joining them together. They cannot be exchanged, one for the other. They cannot replace each other.

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.

These things you did were like prayers; you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.

There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.

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.

Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance.

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.

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter.

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.

I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose.

But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion. She renders herself up, is blotted out; enters the darkness of her own body, forgets her name. Immolation is what she wants, however briefly. To exist without boundaries.