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.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the struggle of being good and quiet in a challenging situation, comparing it to the exhausting act of hanging onto a bridge after falling.
Margaret Atwood's quote captures the internal conflict of striving to be 'good' and 'quiet' in the face of adversity. It illustrates the emotional and physical toll of trying to maintain composure and virtue while feeling suspended in uncertainty, much like the effort required to hold onto the edge of a bridge when in danger. This metaphor highlights the fragility of strength and the struggle against the pressures of external expectations.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a motivational speech aimed at encouraging resilience in difficult times.
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.
This is the middle of my life, I think of it as a place, like the middle of a river, the middle of a bridge, halfway across, halfway over. I'm supposed to have accumulated things by now: possessions, responsibilities, achievements, experience and wisdom. I'm supposed to be a person of substance.
My own cancer experience has taught me that the most comforting words from friends have often been both the simplest and the most honest.
My mustrious lordship, i'll show you what a woman can do
The world needs heroes and it's better they be harmless men like me than villains like Hitler
If we wish to free ourselves from enslavement, we must choose freedom and the responsibility this entails.
I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment, and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in the cockpit.
I speak for those children who cannot speak for themselves, children who have absolutely nothing but their courage and their smiles, their wits and their dreams.
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