I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin - everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone - and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?

Margaret Atwood

Tags: simile secrets metaphor margaret-atwood the-blind-assassin



Go to quote


The thing you don't realize, my dear girl, is that I have been forced by the economic realities to start taking publishing very seriously. For example, it has been brought to my attention that our ability to continue to pay the hordes of people employed by M

Jack McClelland

Tags: humor writing editing editor publishing margaret-atwood



Go to quote


How shrunk, how dwindled, in our times
Creation's mighty seed -
For Man has broke the Fellowship
With murder, lust, and greed.

Margaret Atwood

Tags: dystopia fellowship margaret-atwood toby ren maddaddam-trilogy the-year-of-the-flood when-adam-first



Go to quote


Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.

Margaret Atwood

Tags: writing-craft writing-tips margaret-atwood



Go to quote


Stick a shovel in the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light.

Margaret Atwood

Tags: margaret-atwood the-blind-assassin



Go to quote


The Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it's a freshness, a plumpness of the cells, that's unearned and temporary, and that nothing can replicate. None of them was satisfied with it, however; already they were making attempts to alter themselves into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn't blame them, having done the same once myself.

Margaret Atwood

Tags: beauty youth makeup margaret-atwood the-blind-assassin young-girls



Go to quote


Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous.

Margaret Atwood

Tags: melancholy sadness strangers margaret-atwood the-blind-assassin



Go to quote


The ancestral voices were prophesying war because ancestral voices never shut up, and they hate to be wrong, and war is a sure thing, sooner or later.

Margaret Atwood

Tags: war margaret-atwood the-blind-assassin prophesy



Go to quote


We'll choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is not our only motive; love or grief or despair or hatred is what drives us on. We'll spy relentlessly on the dead; we'll open their letters, we'll read their journals, we'll go through their trash, hoping for a hint, a final word, an explanation, from those who have deserted us--who've left us holding the bag, which is often a good deal emptier than we'd supposed.

Margaret Atwood

Tags: knowledge curiosity margaret-atwood the-blind-assassin snooping



Go to quote


She stubs out her cigarette in the brown glass ashtray, then settles herself against him, ear to his chest. She likes to hear his voice this way, as if it begins not in his throat but in his body, like a hum or a growl, or like a voice speaking from deep underground. Like the blood moving through her own heart: a word, a word, a word.

Margaret Atwood

Tags: margaret-atwood the-blind-assassin



Go to quote



Page 1 of 2.
next last »

©gutesprueche.com

Data privacy

Imprint
Contact
Wir benutzen Cookies

Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.

OK Ich lehne Cookies ab