Sons branch out, but one woman leads to another.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that while men may pursue various paths, women's connections and relationships with each other are often deeper and more continuous.
Margaret Atwood's quote reflects on the dynamics of male and female relationships, indicating that men often explore a variety of relationships or endeavors (branching out) while women's experiences tend to be more interconnected and relational, leading from one relationship to another. The phrase highlights the unique way women sustain bonds with each other, emphasizing the strength and continuity of their connections.
In practice
During a women's conference, to highlight the power of female 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.
In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.
My mother taught me something at a young age - she said 'you are the company you keep.' To define yourself by some label or some level of resources - that's pretty shallow.
Look to be treated by others as you have treated others.
To allow same-sex couples to adopt children and then to label their families as second-class because the adoptive parents are of the same sex is cruel as well as unconstitutional. Classifying some families, and especially their children, as of lesser value should be repugnant to all those in this nation who profess to believe in "family values."
The deepest hunger in human beings is the desire to be appreciated.
How was she to tie herself to a man without permitting him to imprison her? And was there some means of acquiring things without those things possessing her?
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.