Quotes from Lady Oracle

“How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“I didn't want him to become gray and multi-dimensional and complicated like everyone else. Was every Heathcliff a Linton in disguise?”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“and each of his voices left his body in a different colored soul and floated up towards the sun still singing.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“I thought, men who changed their names were likely to be con-men, criminals, undercover agents or magicians, whereas women who changed their names were probably just married.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“I grew sodden with light; my skin on the inside glowed a dull red.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“A man in a cloud, with icicle teeth and eyes of fire.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“My life had a tendency to spread, get flabby, to scroll and festoon like the frame of a baroque mirror, which came from following the line of least resistance. I wanted my death, by contrast, to be neat and simple, understated, even a little severe, like a Quaker church or the basic black dress with a single strand of pearls...”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“Below me, in the foundations of the house, I could hear the clothes I'd buried there growing themselves a body.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“Was every Heathcliff a Linton in disguise?”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“She sits on the iron throne
She is one and three
The dark lady
the redgold lady
The blank lady
oracle
of blood, she who must be
obeyed
forever
Her glass wings are gone
She floats down the river
singing her last song”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“Now I wanted to be acknowledged, but I feared it.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“His view of the world featured swift disasters set against a background of lurking doom, my cooking did nothing to contradict it.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“to fix and make plausible, the nebulous emotions of my costumed heroins, like diamonds on a sea of dough.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“Love was merely a tool, smiles were another tool, they were both just tools for accomplishing certain ends. No magic, merely chemicals. I felt I'd never really loved anyone, not Paul, not Chuck the Royal Porcupine, not even Arthur. I'd polished them with my love and expected them to shine, brightly enough to return my own reflection, enhanced and sparkling.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“It's no good thinking you're invisible if you aren't”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“. . . they lurk passively, like vampire sheep”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“I sang out the words unflinchingly though, as I stomped around the toadstool in clouds of church-basement dust, with a damp Gnome hand clutched in each of mine.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“I would pore for hours over the stalls of worn necklaces, sets of gilt spoons, sugar tongs in the shape of hen's feet or midget hands, clocks that didn't work, flowered china, spotty mirrors and ponderous furniture, the flotsam left by those receding centuries in which, more and more, I was living.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“Besides, who would think of marrying a mothball? A question my mother put to me often, later, in other forms.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“you can't change the past,Aunt Lou used to say.Oh, but I wanted to;that was the one thing I really wanted to do”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“I always remembered what she looked like, the dried apple face, the silvery gray hair, the snapping blue eyes.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“He had been with me, but he wasn't with me now, we had been walking along a street like this one and then the future swept over us and we were separated. He was in the distance now, across the ocean, on a beach, the wind ruffling his hair, I could hardly see his features. He was moving at an ever-increasing speed away from me, into the land of the dead, the dead past, irretrievable.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“There was always that shadowy twin, thin when i was fat, fat when i was thin, myself in silvery narrative...”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“Occasionally when no one was looking I would try on the wigs myself, but it was mostly the gray ones. I wanted to see how I would look when I was older. I would soon be old, I felt, and nothing would happen to me in the meantime because I wasn't interested in anything or anyone. I'd be deserted, I was convinced of it now. I was miserable.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

“I’ve always wanted to know what it was like to fuck a cult figure,’ the Royal Porcupine said reflectively. He was lying on his mattress, watching me as I scrubbed the dog blood off my belly with a corner of his shirt, dipped in the toilet. He didn’t have a sink. ‘Well,”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle

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Popular quotes

“In the event of a communication breakdown, decide whether you will dwell in the negative or rise above the angst and turmoil in a firm, positive manner and encourage all parties to listen and be heard.”
― Lorii Myers, quote from Targeting Success, Develop the Right Business Attitude to be Successful in the Workplace

“I love you, Jeremy.”

He still felt it, that wince of doubt. The urge to push her away. She said it so simply. As though there was nothing easier, more natural in the world. The words themselves hung in the air, so tiny, so bare.

Jeremy felt as though she’d thrust a frail, delicate, birdlike thing into his big, clumsy hands, charging him to keep it safe. And God forgive him, his first impulse was to shove it away. He would destroy it, surely. In his desperation, he would grasp it so tightly it would break into a thousand pieces—and his own heart would break along with it.”
― Tessa Dare, quote from Goddess of the Hunt

“Imagine not being frightened by any feeling. Imagine knowing that nothing will destroy you. That you are beyond any feeling, an state. Bigger than. Vaster than. That there is no reason to use drugs because anything a drug could do would pale in comparison to knowing who you are. To what you can understand, live, be, just by being with that presents itself to you in the form of the feelings you have...”
― Geneen Roth, quote from Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything

“We spread the Gospel by the proclamation of the Word of God (see Rom. 10:17). But God has told us that we should restrain evil by the power of the sword and by the power of civil government (as in the teaching of Romans 13:1–6, quoted above, p. 37). If the power of government (such as a policeman) is not present in an emergency, when great harm is being done to another person, then my love for the victim should lead me to use physical force to prevent any further harm from occurring. If I found a criminal attacking my wife or children, I would use all my physical strength and all the physical force at my disposal against him, not to persuade him to trust in Christ as his Savior, but to immediately stop him from harming my wife and children! I would follow the command of Nehemiah, who told the men of Israel, “Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes” (Neh. 4:14; see also Genesis 14:14–16, where Abraham rescued his kinsman Lot who had been taken captive by a raiding army). Boyd has wrongly taken one of the ways that God restrains evil in this world (changing hearts through the Gospel of Christ) and decided that it is the only way that God restrains evil (thus neglecting the valuable role of civil government). Both means are from God, both are good, and both should be used by Christians. This is why Boyd misunderstands Jesus’ statement, “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matt. 5:39). When this verse is rightly understood (see below, p. 82), we see that Jesus is telling individuals not to take revenge for a personal insult or a humiliating slap on the cheek.51 But this command for individual kindness is not the same as the instructions that the Bible gives to governments, who are to “bear the sword” and be a “terror” to bad conduct and are to carry out “God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:3–4). The verses must be understood rightly in their own contexts. One is talking about individual conduct and personal revenge. The other is talking about the responsibilities of government. We should not confuse the two passages.”
― Wayne A. Grudem, quote from Politics - According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture

“But before either of us can speak again, I feel crackle-crackle-crackle. I can't tell what's going to happen next. My seizure begins to spin slowly through me. What will my dad do? Whatever it is, in another moment I'll be flying free. Either way, whatever he does, I'll be soaring.”
― Terry Trueman, quote from Stuck in Neutral

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.