Quotes from book
The Blind Assassin

The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood

The Blind Assassin is a novel by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 2000. Set in Canada, it is narrated from the present day, referring to previous events that span the twentieth century.

Margaret Atwood photo

“All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin (2000)
Context: All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. …Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.

Margaret Atwood photo

“Don't misunderstand me. I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and far more complicated. But sometimes it's hard to put up with.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood photo

“Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood photo

“Where were we? I've forgotten.
He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever.
Right. Yes. The usual choices.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood photo

“There were a lot of gods. Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood photo

“What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves -- our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood photo

“Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood photo

“Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood photo

“What is the real breath of a man — the breathing out or the breathing in?”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood photo

“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

Margaret Atwood photo

“The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood photo

“Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood photo

“Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: Der blinde Mörder

Margaret Atwood photo

“But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell burst, the plummet of the car from a bridge.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood photo

“i sometimes felt as if these marks on my body were a kind of code, which blossomed, then faded, like invisible ink held to a candle. But if they were a code, who held the key to it? I was sand, I was snow—written on, rewritten, smoothed over.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood photo

“Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. The bridge was being repaired: she went right through the Danger sign. The car fell a hundred feet into the ravine, smashing through the treetops feathery with new leaves, then burst into flames and rolled down into the shallow creek at the bottom. Chunks of the bridge fell on top of it. Nothing much was left but charred smithereens.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin (2000) first lines

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