“There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“Life is warped. I'm just in sync.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“It had helped to keep her sane, that writing. Then, when time had begun again and real people had entered it, she'd abandoned it here. Now it's a whisper from the past.
Is that what writing amounts to? The voice your ghost would have, if it had a voice?”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“But hatred and viciousness are addictive. You can get high on them. Once you've had a little, you start shaking if you don't get more.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“Why is it always such a surprise? thinks Toby. The moon. Even though we know it's coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“Perfection exacts a price, but it's the imperfect who pay it”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“She is about to add, "I have scars, inside me," but she stops herself. What is a scar, Oh Toby? That would be the next question. Then she'd have to explain what a scar is. A scar is like writing on your body. It tells about something that once happened to you, such as a cut on your skin where blood came out.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, "I'll be dead," you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar. And so was God, because as soon as there's a past tense, there has to be a past before the past, and you keep going back in time until you get to I don't know, and that's what God is. It's what you don't know - the dark, the hidden, the underside of the visible, and all because we have grammar ...”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“Though as he'd say, what is 'belief' but a willingness to suspend the negatives?”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“Why is war so much like a practical joke? she thinks. Hiding behind bushes, leaping out, with not much difference between Boo! and Bang! except the blood.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“Gender roles suck," says Swift Fox.
Then you should stop playing them, thinks Toby.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“Had she believed all that? Old Pilar's folklore? No, not really; or not exactly. Most likely Pilar hadn't quite believed it either, but it was a reassuring story: that the dead were not entirely dead but were alive in a different way; a paler way admittedly, and somewhat darker. But still able to send messages, if only such messages could be recognized and deciphered. People need such stories, Pilar said once, because however dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“The moon. Even though we know it’s coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“I remember adapt,” says Toby. “It was another way of saying tough luck. To people you weren’t going to help out.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“He was twisted as a pretzel, he was a tinfoil-halo shitnosed frogstomping king rat asshole, but he wasn't stupid.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“People need such stories, because however dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“I already told you,” said Adam. “There is no need to swear.”
“Sorry, it just fucking slipped out,” said Zeb.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“Amazing how quickly the past becomes idyllic.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“When you focus on details like this - close up, really clear, totally useless - you know you're in shock”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“Is that what writing amounts to? The voice your ghost would have, if it had a voice?”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“But I have already told the beginning, so right now it's the middle. And Zeb is in the middle of the story about Zeb. He is in the middle of his own story.
I am not in this part of the story; it hasn't come to the part with me. But I'm waiting, far off in the future. I'm waiting for the story of Zeb to join up with mine. The story of Toby. The story I am in right now, with you.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“Would I laugh?"
"Matter of fact, you would," says Zeb. "Heart like shale. What you need is a good fracking.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“The people in the chaos cannot learn. They cannot understand what they are doing to the sea and the sky and the plants and the animals. They cannot understand that they are killing them, and that they will end by killing themselves. And there are so many of them, and each one of them is doing part of the killing, whether they know it or not. And when”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“The only sure camouflage was unpredictability.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“Why is it always such a surprise? thinks Toby. The moon. Even though we know it’s coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“This is how it starts, among the closed circles of the marooned, the shipwrecked, the besieged: jealousy, dissention, a breach in the groupthink walls. Then the entry of the foe, the murderer, the shadow slipping in through the door we forgot to lock because we were distracted by our darker selves: nursing our minor hatreds, indulging our petty resentments, yelling at one another, tossing the crockery.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“There’s the story, then there’s the real story, then there’s the story of how the story came to be told. Then there’s what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
“The possibility of injury or death was a strong attraction: as the online world became more and more pre-edited and slicked up, and as even its so-called reality sites raised questions about authenticity in the minds of the viewers, the rough, unpolished physical world was taking on a mystic allure.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from MaddAddam
Margaret Atwood
Born place: in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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“Be honest with yourself; set the alarm for the time the Real You will get up, not the Ambitious You, because the Ambitious You doesn't really exist.”
― Laurie Notaro, quote from Autobiography of a Fat Bride: True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood
“I sleep lightly and tread to keep my head out of the sea of dreams.”
― David Anthony Durham, quote from Acacia: The War with the Mein
“Magnesium and calcium are easiest to consume in pill form, and 500 milligrams of magnesium taken prior to bed will also improve sleep.”
― Timothy Ferriss, quote from The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman
“I would like to be able to gently drift in and out of existence when I wanted to.”
― Henry Rollins, quote from Solipsist
“Have you noticed that if you really want something, you can make it happen? But you need to be sure it's what you really want, because sometimes, when it comes true, you realize too late that it's not what you wanted. Not at all.”
― Laura Resau, quote from The Queen of Water
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