Margaret Atwood: Word

“There is so much silence between the words,
you say. You say, The sensed absence
of God and the sensed presence
amount to much the same thing,
only in reverse.”

“I feel like the word shatter.”

“is a futile word. It's about what didn't happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It belongs in another dimension of space.”

“They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word. These women could be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose.”

“Faith is only a word, embroidered.”

“You can wet the rim of a glass and run your finger around the rim and it will make a sound. This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter. I want to be with someone.”

“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.”

“When they're gone out of his head, these words, they'll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been.”

“Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.”

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”

“Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself:. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor.”

“Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered.”

“How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word.”

“Where do the words go
when we have said them?”

“One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope.

In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive?”

“What is your favorite word?”
“And. It is so hopeful.”

“Your hand is a warm stone I hold between two words.”

“The animals have no need for speech, why talk when you are a word.”

“It's his word against the Commander's, unless he wants to head a posse. Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words.”