Quotes from The Tent

“A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“Time folds you in its arms and gives you one last kiss, and then it flattens you out and folds you up and tucks you away until it's time for you to become someone else's past time, and then time folds again.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“No more photos. Surely there are enough. No more shadows of myself thrown by light onto pieces of paper, onto squares of plastic. No more of my eyes, mouths, noses, moods, bad angles. No more yawns, teeth, wrinkles. I suffer from my own multiplicity. Two or three images would have been enough, or four, or five. That would have allowed for a firm idea: This is she. As it is, I'm watery, I ripple, from moment to moment I dissolve into my other selves. Turn the page: you, looking, are newly confused. You know me too well to know me. Or not too well: too much.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“Perhaps its not the world that is soundless but we who are deaf.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“All observations of life are harsh, because life is. I lament that fact, but I cannot change it.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“If you want what's in the package you should at least know how to get the string off, is what I say.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“I could end this with a moral,
as if this were a fable about animals,
though no fables are really about animals.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart. If you'd wanted the narrative line you should have asked earlier, when I still knew everything and was more than willing to tell. That was before I discovered the virtues of scissors, the virtues of matches.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“It’s a good excuse, though, orphanhood. It explains everything—every mistake and wrong turn. As Sherlock Holmes declared. She had no mother to advise her. How we long for it, that lack of advice! Imprudence could have been ours. Passionate affairs. Reckless adventures. Of course we’re grateful for our stable upbringings, our hordes of informative relatives, our fleece-lined advantages, our lack of dramatic plots. But there’s a corner of envy in us all the same. Why doesn’t anything of interest happen to us, coddled as we are? Why do the orphans get all the good lines?”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“A road is a process, not a location.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“I won't fatten them in cages, though. I won't ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won't change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won't drain out their life's blood. They can do all those things for themselves.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“All observations of life are harsh, because life is.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“Life Stories: Why hunger for these? One, it fits a hunger. Maybe it is more like bossiness. Maybe we just want to be in charge of the life, no matter who lived it...”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“Fear is synonymous with the future, and the future consists of forked roads, I should say forking roads, because the roads are forking all the time, like slow lightning. A road is a process, not a location.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“I follow suit, said the lion,
vacating his coat of arms
and movie logos; and the eagle said,
Get me off this flag.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“You don’t understand much, he says. Why do you think I was lost in the impenetrable forest in the first place?”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“No more photos. Surely there are enough. No more shadows of myself thrown by light onto pieces of paper, onto squares of plastic.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“What are we do to? The child sex trade is not for us: our children are unattractive and rude, and - due to the knowledge of our history - have a bad habit of mugging prospective customers and shoving them over cliffs.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“At this dim season of the year we hunger for such tales. Winter's tales, they are. We want to huddle round them, as if around a small but cheerful fire... It was the right thing to do on the darkest day of the year.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“Human beings- I've observed- are hot-wired for score keeping, and since they like to win, they're always going one better than the other fellow.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“Walking was not fast enough, so we ran. Running was not fast enough, so we galloped. Galloping was not fast enough, so we sailed. Sailing was not fast enough, so we rolled merrily along on long metal tracks. Long metal tracks were not fast enough, so we drove. Driving was not fast enough, so we flew.
Flying isn't fast enough for us. We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“You're not my real parents, every child has thought. I'm not your real child. But with orphans, it's true. What freedom, to thumb your nose authentically!”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“I suffer from my own multiplicity. Two or three images would have been enough, or four, or five. That would be allowed for a firm idea: This is she. As it is, I'm watery, I ripple, from moment to moment I dissolve into my other selves.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“Everyone believed him of course, but you always knew with Salome that if anyone’s head was going to roll it wouldn’t be hers.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“Wind comes in, your candle tips over and flares up, and a loose tent-flap catches fire, and through the widening black-edged gap you can see the eyes of the howlers, red and shining in the light from your burning paper shelter, but you keep on writing anyway because what else can you do?”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“whose life am I living. Whose life am I failing to live”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

“listen. the leaves no longer rustle, the wind no longer sighs, our hearts no longer beat. They've fallen silent. Fallen, as if into the earth. Or is it we who have fallen? Perhaps it's not the world that is soundless but we who are dear. What membrane seals us off from the music we used to dance to? Why can't we hear?”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Tent

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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.