Quotes by Margaret Atwood

“I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.”

“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 ga...”

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”

“Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.”

“Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. God is l...”

“Nature is an expert in cost-benefit analysis,' she says. 'Although she does her accounting a little differently. As for debts, she always collects in the long run...”

“As Charles Darwin said,'The economy shown by Nature in her resources is striking,'' says the Spirit. 'All wealth comes from Nature. Without it, there wouldn't be any economics. The primary wealth i...”

“Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.”

“How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.”

“A truth should exist,it should not be usedlike this. If I love youis that a fact or a weapon?”

“Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.”

“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting p...”

“...the values ascribed to the Indian will depend on what the white writer feels about Nature, and America has always had mixed feelings about that. At one end of the spectrum is Thoreau, wishing to...”

“How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, how could we live? If you knew what was going to...”

“She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation.In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. What he s...”

“This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love.”

“What is it the I'll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which isn't yours to bestow. Only a listener, perhaps; only someone who will see me. Don't prettify me t...”

“The Eskimo has fifty-names for snow because it is important to them there ought to be as many for love. ”

“If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?”

“They will not let you have peace, they don't want you to have anything they don't have themselves.”