Quotes from The Year of the Flood

“What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“Maybe that's what love is, I thought: it's being pissed off.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“You can forget who you are if you're alone too much.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“...we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“I could see how you could do extreme things for the person you loved. Adam One said that when you loved a person, that love might not always get returned the way you wanted, but it was a good thing anyway because love went out all around you like an energy wave, and a creature you didn't know would be helped by it.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering Mine!Mine!”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy?”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“All Creatures know that some must die
That all the rest may take and eat;
Sooner or later, all transform
Their blood to wine, their flesh to meat.

But Man alone seeks Vengefulness,
And writes his abstract Laws on stone;
For this false Justice he has made,
He tortures limb and crushes bone.

Is this the image of a god?
My tooth for yours, your eye for mine?
Oh, if Revenge did move the stars
Instead of Love, they would not shine.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“I tried to visualize my jealousy as a yellowy-brown cloud boiling around inside me, then going out through my nose like smoke and turning into a stone and falling down into the ground. That did work a little. But in my visualization a plant covered with poison berries would grow out of the stone, whether I wanted it to or not.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“She said love was useless, because it led you into dumb exchanges in which you gave too much away, and then you got bitter and mean.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody--a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“You couldn’t leave words lying around where our enemies might find them.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“I'm fine," said Pilar, "for the moment. And the moment is the only time we can be fine in.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“As with all knowledge, once you knew it, you couldn't imagine how it was that you hadn't known it before. Like stage magic, knowledge before you knew it took place before your very eyes, but you were looking elsewhere.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“It's better to hope than mope!”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“The Adams and the Eves used to say, We are what we eat, but I prefer to say, we are what we wish. Because if you can't wish, why bother?”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“But reality has too much darkness in it. Too many crows”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“She knows she's deceiving herself about that, but she prefers to deceive herself. She desperately needs to believe such pure joy is still possible.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“Thus the time passed. Toby stopped counting it. In any case, time is not a thing that passes, said Pilar: it’s a sea on which you float.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“Why can't I believe? she asked the darkness.
Behind her eyelids she saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned.
It gazed at her. She gazed at it. "You are the effect of a carefully calibrated blend of plant toxins," she told it.
Then she fell asleep.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

“What restless woman can resist a man with a shovel in one hand and a glowing rose bush in the other, and a moderately crazed glitter in his eyes that might be mistaken for love?”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Year of the Flood

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Popular quotes

“See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was.”
― Gillian Flynn, quote from Sharp Objects

“support of the Mexican Revolution. He hadn’t known”
― E.L. Doctorow, quote from Ragtime

“My “Best Woman” speech
Good evening everyone, my name is Rosie and as you can see Alex has
decided to go down the non-traditional route of asking me to be his best
woman for the day. Except we all know that today that title does not belong
to me. It belongs to Sally, for she is clearly his best woman.
I could call myself the “best friend” but I think we all know that today
that title no longer refers to me either. That title too belongs to Sally.
But what doesn’t belong to Sally is a lifetime of memories of Alex the
child, Alex the teenager, and Alex the almost-a-man that I’m sure he would
rather forget but that I will now fill you all in on. (Hopefully they all will
laugh.)
I have known Alex since he was five years old. I arrived on my first day
of school teary-eyed and red-nosed and a half an hour late. (I am almost sure
Alex will shout out “What’s new?”) I was ordered to sit down at the back of
the class beside a smelly, snotty-nosed, messy-haired little boy who had the
biggest sulk on his face and who refused to look at me or talk to me. I hated
this little boy.
I know that he hated me too, him kicking me in the shins under the table
and telling the teacher that I was copying his schoolwork was a telltale sign.
We sat beside each other every day for twelve years moaning about school,
moaning about girlfriends and boyfriends, wishing we were older and wiser and out of school, dreaming for a life where we wouldn’t have double maths
on a Monday morning.
Now Alex has that life and I’m so proud of him. I’m so happy that he’s
found his best woman and his best friend in perfect little brainy and annoying
Sally.
I ask you all to raise your glasses and toast my best friend Alex and his
new best friend, best woman, and wife, Sally, and to wish them luck and
happiness and divorce in the future.
To Alex and Sally!”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from Love, Rosie

“The next morning dawned bright and sweet, like ribbon candy.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from Garden Spells

“I wonder if it will be—can be—any more beautiful than this,’ murmured Anne, looking around her with the loving, enraptured eyes of those to whom ‘home’ must always be the loveliest spot in the world, no matter what fairer lands may lie under alien stars.”
― L.M. Montgomery, quote from Anne of the Island

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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.

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