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

About the author

Popular quotes

“I walk along the avenue thinking how shit always sinks, and how all these towns dump their shit for the river to push it down to the delta. Then I think about that girl sitting in the alley, sitting in her own slough, and I shake my head. I have not gotten that low.

I stop in front of the bus station, look in on the waiting people, and think about all the places they are going. But I know they can't run away from it or drink their way out or die to get rid of it. It's always there, you just look at somebody and they give you a look like the Wrath of God.”
― Breece D'J Pancake, quote from The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake

“You don’t understand the unbearable beauty of being you.”
― Amie Kaufman, quote from This Shattered World

“Do not try any of this at home. The author of this book is an Internet cartoonist, not a health or safety expert. He likes it when things catch fire or explode, which means he does not have your best interests in mind. The publisher and the author disclaim responsibility for any adverse effects resulting, directly or indirectly, from information contained in this book.”
― Randall Munroe, quote from What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

“What may I do to get back into your good graces?”
“You’ve done nothing to offend me.”
“Then why did you acknowledge Robart before me?”
What?
“You addressed him before you addressed me.”
I cleared my throat. “Just to be clear, you’re upset because I spoke to Robart before I spoke to you? In the ballroom just before we went to check on the car?”
“I understand that the circumstances of the summit prevent frank exchanges,” Arland said. “An appearance of propriety must be maintained and any hint of favoritism is to be avoided at all costs. But when one travels so far, one looks for the small things. A chance glance. A brief kindness, freely offered and gone unnoticed by all except its intended recipient. Some hint, some indication that he has not been forgotten. One might take an acknowledgment of a bitter rival before him, in public, as an indication of certain things.”
It dawned on me. His feelings were actually hurt.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Sweep in Peace

“The game’s rules were Byzantine, and we had to work them out through trial and error. One rule, which had only gradually become apparent, was that one could only move into another character’s head if the move did not involve too big a jump in social status. A peasant could not swap into the head of a king, even if the king knelt down to kiss the peasant. But the peasant could get there by jumping into the head of a blacksmith, and then an armourer, and then an officer in the king’s guard, and so on - working their way up by discrete steps. Sometimes it would not be possible to change character between one session and the next, but that was all part of the game’s richly involving texture. It was difficult and slow, but because at each step one had access to the memories and personality of the inhabited character, it was seldom boring.”
― Alastair Reynolds, quote from House of Suns

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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.

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