Where do you draw the line, between love and greed? We never did know, we always wanted more. We want to take it all in, for one last time, we want to eat the world with our eyes.
Interpretation
The quote explores the tension between love and greed, emphasizing our insatiable desire for more in life.
Margaret Atwood's quote reflects on the complex relationship between love and greed, suggesting that humanity often struggles to distinguish between genuine affection and a covetous yearning for excess. The desire to ‘eat the world with our eyes’ implies a longing to experience everything life has to offer, yet it also hints at the superficiality and potential greed underlying that desire.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the impact of consumerism on human relationships.
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.
Posting a letter and getting married [sic] are among the few things left that are entirely romantic; for to be entirely romantic, a thing must be irrevocable
This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there's no need at all to understand what's happening, because everything happens within you.
I hope never to marry in this way; I wish to make my wife happy, but not to become rich by her means, so I will let things alone and enjoy my golden freedom till I am so well off that I can support both wife and children.
The whole idea is to look at the television camera and present as much love as you possibly could to a person who might feel that he or she needs it.
She wasn't much to look at but she was something to think about.
I loved Spencer Tracy. I would have done anything for him.
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