Margaret Atwood: Word

Margaret Atwood is Canadian writer. Explore interesting quotes on word.
Margaret Atwood: 696 quotes32 likes

“A word after a word after a word is power.”

Margaret Atwood

“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.”

Margaret Atwood book Morning in the Burned House

"In the Secular Night"
Morning in the Burned House (1995)
Context: 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.
You say, I have too much white clothing.
You start to hum.
Several hundred years ago
this could have been mysticism
or heresy. It isn’t now.
Outside there are sirens.
Someone’s been run over.
The century grinds on.

“I feel like the word shatter.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

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

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

“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.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“Faith is only a word, embroidered.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“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.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“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.”

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

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

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

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

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

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

Margaret Atwood

“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.”

Margaret Atwood book Alias Grace

Source: Alias Grace

“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.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

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

Margaret Atwood

Source: Procedures For Underground

“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?”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

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

Margaret Atwood

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

Margaret Atwood

“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.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale