The alcohol smell is on my fingers, cold and remote, piercing like a steel pin going in. It smells like white enamel basins. When I look up at the stars in the nighttime, cold and white and sharp, I think they must smell like that.
Interpretation
The quote evokes an intense sensory experience, reflecting on the feelings of loneliness and the starkness of existence.
In this quote, Margaret Atwood uses the imagery of alcohol and stars to convey a deep sense of isolation and sensory perception. The smell of alcohol symbolizes a cold detachment, while the sharpness of the stars suggests a harsh, unforgiving universe. The connection between these elements highlights the interplay between human experience and the vastness of existence, prompting contemplation about the relationship between our sensations and the universe around us.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the connection between human experiences and the vastness of the universe.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
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.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you're not a traveler. You're a f@@king tourist.
The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. You can't weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron.
But we are not interested in death at all: rather, we escape the facts, we are continuously escaping the facts. Death is there, and every moment we are dying. Death is not something far away, it is here and now: we are dying. But while we are dying we go on being concerned about life. This concern with life, this over concern with life, is just an escape, just a fear. Death is there, deep inside - growing.
Perhaps passing through the gates of death is like passing quietly through the gate in a pasture fence. On the other side, you keep walking, without the need to look back. No shock, no drama, just the lifting of a plank or two in a simple wooden gate in a clearing. Neither pain, nor floods of light, nor great voices, but just the silent crossing of a meadow.
Though we feel we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets.
Switzerland is a country where very few things begin, but many things end.
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