Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale (1985)

69 Sourced Quotes

View all Margaret Atwood Quotes
I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.

Margaret Atwood
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Nobody said when.

Margaret Atwood
I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it.

Margaret Atwood
Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.

Margaret Atwood
You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave

Margaret Atwood
I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name; remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me. I want to steal something.

Margaret Atwood
But that' s where I am, there's no escaping it. Time's a trap, I'm caught in it.

Margaret Atwood
It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many.

Margaret Atwood
The sitting room is subdued, symmetrical; it's one of the shapes money takes when it freezes.

Margaret Atwood
But who can remember pain, once it's over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

Margaret Atwood
How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word.

Margaret Atwood
A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women.

Margaret Atwood
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.

Margaret Atwood
Some days I do appreciate things more, eggs, flowers, but then I decide I'm only having an attack of sentimentality, my brain going pastel Technicolor, like a beautiful-sunset greeting cards they used to make so many of in California. High-gloss hearts. The danger is grayout.

Margaret Atwood
It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.

Margaret Atwood
You must cultivate poverty of spirit. Blessed are the meek. She didn't go on to say anything about inheriting the earth.

Margaret Atwood
It's his word against the Commander's, unless he wants to head a posse. Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words.

Margaret Atwood
All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.

Margaret Atwood
There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.

Margaret Atwood
One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope. In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive?

Margaret Atwood
These things you did were like prayers; you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.

Margaret Atwood
Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you.

Margaret Atwood
Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.

Margaret Atwood
You can wet the rim of a glass and run your finger around the rim and it will make a sound. This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter. I want to be with someone.

Margaret Atwood
By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are.

Margaret Atwood
Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

Margaret Atwood
That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

Margaret Atwood
I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.

Margaret Atwood
You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, is what he says. We thought we could do better.
Better? I say, in a small voice. How can he think this is better?
Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.

Margaret Atwood
Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered.

Margaret Atwood