Margaret Atwood - Tumblr Posts

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories. The Handmaid's Tale ~ Margret Atwood

Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely.

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

When Margaret Atwood said, "there is something in your throat that wants to get out and you won't let it." And then franz kafka wrote, "and what I really intended to say in the end is remains unsaid."

On Writers and Writing, Margaret Atwood (Non-fiction / Essays, 224 Pages, Paperback, Virago Press)

and when Min Yoongi said, "니가 알았던 난 없고 내가 알았던 넌 없어 [There’s no me that you used to know, there’s no you who I used to know]"

When Anne Carson said, “I once loved you now i don’t know you at all” and when Margaret Atwoood said, “I used to say I’d know you anywhere, but it’s getting harder” and when Marina Tsvetaeva said, “You seem already gone” and when Henry Dumas said, “I caught you forgetting me” and when 

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

— MARGARET ATWOOD, from Cat’s Eye.

“One day he said to me ̶ […] ̶ 'Why are you sad?’. ‘I’m not sad,’ I said, and began to cry. Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous.”

—

Margaret Atwood, from ‘The Blind Assassin’, first published in 2000.

“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined”

- Ocean Vuong, from ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’, first published in 2019.

“Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do.”

— Margaret Atwood, from ‘Cat’s Eye’, first published in 1988.

“It’s bad for me, but I need to remember what bad for me is like.”

— Margaret Atwood, from ‘Cat’s Eye’, first published in 1988.

“[…], the eyes large, nocturnal ̶”

— Margaret Atwood, from ‘Cat’s Eye’, first published in 1988. 

“I was unfair to him, of course, but where would I have been without unfairness? In thrall, in harness. Young women need unfairness, it’s one of their few defenses.”

— Margaret Atwood, from ‘Cat’s Eye’, first published in 1988.

“I bet you had a secret life. I bet it kept you going.”

— Margaret Atwood, from ‘The Blind Assassin’, first published in 2000.

Margaret Atwood, published on Eating Fire;

“How could I be sleeping with this particular man… Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.”

— Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“The witch is absolutely necessary.”

— Margaret Atwood, from “Two Solicitudes,” orginally published c. 1998

We Are Hard on Each Other by Margaret Atwood i We are hard on each other and call it honesty, choosing our jagged truths with care and aiming them across the neutral table. The things we say are true; it is our crooked aims, our choices turn them criminal. ii Of course your lies are more amusing: you make them new each time. Your truths, painful and boring repeat themselves over & over perhaps because you own so few of them iii A truth should exist, it should not be used like this. If I love you is that a fact or a weapon? iv Does the body lie moving like this, are these touches, hair, wet soft marble my tongue runs over lies you are telling me? Your body is not a word, it does not lie or speak truth either. It is only here or not here.

“If I love you is that a fact or a weapon?”

— Margaret Atwood

 when sylvia plath wrote “the silence depressed me. it wasn’t the silence of silence. it was my own silence.” and when anne carson wrote “why does tragedy exist? because you are full of rage. why are you full of rage? because you are full of grief.” and when jenny slate wrote “and i am getting older but i am not growing up and my heart is getting soft dark spots on it like a fruit that has gone bad.” and when virginia woolf wrote “to want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain.” and when susanna kaysen wrote “when you’re sad, you need to hear your sorrow structured into sound.” and when margaret atwood wrote “already my childhood seemed far away – a remote age, faded and bittersweet, like dried flowers. did i regret its loss, did i want it back? i didn’t think so…” and when gillian flynn wrote “i was not a lovable child, and i’d grown into a deeply unlovable adult.”

‘A long time ago i was desperately in love’

Margaret Atwood, from True Stories: Poems; "True Romances," originally published in 1981

I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.

Margaret Atwood