Quotes from book
Cat's Eye

Cat's Eye
Margaret Atwood

Cat's Eye is a 1988 novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood about controversial painter Elaine Risley, who vividly reflects on her childhood and teenage years. Her strongest memories are of Cordelia, who was the leader of a trio of girls who were both very cruel and very kind to her in ways that tint Elaine's perceptions of relationships and her world — not to mention her art — into her middle years. The novel unfolds in mid-20th century Canada, from World War II to the late 1980s, and includes a look at many of the cultural elements of that time period, including feminism and various modern art movements. The book was a finalist for the 1988 Governor General's Award and for the 1989 Booker Prize.

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“This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“Craziness was considered funny, like all other things that were in reality frightening and profoundly shameful.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“Today on the way home, it snows. Big, soft caressing flakes fall onto our skin like cold moths; the air fills with feathers.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“I believe that everyone else my age is an adult whereas I am merely in disguise.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Variant: Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
Source: Cat's Eye (1988)

Margaret Atwood photo

“Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hard-shelled, firmly closed.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“The alcohol smell is on my fingers, cold and remote, piercing like a steel pin going in. It smells like white enamel basins. When I look up at the stars in the nighttime, cold and white and sharp, I think they must smell like that.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“What we share may be a lot like a traffic accident but we get one another. We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“I'm a fool, to confuse this with goodness. I am not good.
I know too much to be good. I know myself.
I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“Never pray for justice, because you might get some.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“There's blood, a taste I remember. It tastes of orange popsicles, penny gumballs, red licorice, gnawed hair, dirty ice.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“I walk away from him. It's enormously pleasing to me, this walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“I see that there will be no end to imperfection, or to doing things the wrong way. Even if you grow up, no matter how hard you scrub, whatever you do, there will always be some other stain or spot on your face or stupid act, somebody frowning.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood photo

“Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings. Then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

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