Margaret Atwood Quotes - Page 6

...the values ascribed to the Indian will depend on what the white writer feels about Nature, and America has always had mixed feelings about that. At one end of the spectrum is Thoreau, wishing to immerse himself in swamps for the positive vibrations; at the other end is Benjamin Franklin, who didn't like Nature. [p.91]

I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight.

The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.

Expand your world. (Stories about wizards and spells) are very frequently about power relationships...

The heart with letters on it shining like a light bulb through the trim hole painted in the chest, art history.

Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blur the edges; then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it's noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear.

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.

War is what happens when language fails.

It wasn't so easy though, ending the war. A war is a huge fire; the ashes from it drift far, and settle slowly.

از نقطه نظر اقتصادی جنگ یک آتش معجزه آسا بود؛ یک حریق عظیم کیمیا گرانه Ú©Ù‡ دود بلنده شده از Ø%

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.

When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning - human meaning, that is - is defined by them. You have to admit that.

What were prizes but one more level of control imposed on Art by the establishment?

But remember that forgiveness, too, is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.

As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter...

History is a construct...Any point of entry is possible and all choices are arbitrary. Still there are definitive moments...We can look at these events and say that after them things were never the same again.

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you.

Love is giving, marriage is buying and selling. You can't put love into a contract.

But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.