Margaret Atwood citáty

strana 8

„Žijte v přítomnosti, co nejvíc ji využívejte, nic jiného nemáte.“

„Pokud je národní duševní nemocí Spojených států megalomanie, v Kanadě je to paranoidní schizofrenie.“

„Moje seznámení s náboženstvím proběhlo způsobem, jakým se většina dětí v té době seznamovala se sexem, ne na ulici, ale na betonovém školním dvoře se štěrkovými cestičkami, během zimních měsíců, kdy jsem chodila do školy. Děti tu postávaly ve skupinkách, držely se za ruce v palčácích a špitaly si. Strašily mě líčením, že na nebi je nějaký mrtvý stařec, který vidí všechno, co dělám, a já jsem se jim pomstila tím, že jsem jim řekla, jak se rodí miminka. Některé matky pak telefonovaly mojí matce a stěžovaly si na mě, ale já jsem přesvědčená, že mě jejich děti vyděsily víc než já je: ony mi nevěřily, zato já jim ano.“

„V určitém okamžiku se musel můj krk nějak uzavřít, jako když zamrzne rybník nebo se zacelí rána, a já jsem zůstala uvězněná ve své hlavě; od té chvíle se ode mě všechno odráželo, jako bych byla uvnitř nějaké skleněné vázy nebo procházela vesnicí, jejíž obyvatele sice vidím, ale neslyším, protože jim nerozumím. Stěny lahve zkreslují obraz i vnějšímu pozorovateli: žába ve sklenici vypadá široká; když se na mě dívali, musela jsem jim připadat směšná.“

„Minulost je mnohem bezpečnější, protože cokoli v ní je, se už stalo. Nelze to změnit, takže se svým způsobem není čeho bát.“

“Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.”

“I am tempted to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great compliment to a woman.”

“The objects I chose were designed to hold something, but I didn't fill them up. They remained empty. They were little symbolic shrines to thirst.”

“We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.”

“The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish, drying on sand.”

“I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened.”

“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.”

“Gardening is not a rational act.”

“I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart.”

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

“The moon is a stone and the sky is full of deadly hardware, but oh God, how beautiful anyway.”

“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.”

“Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.”

“Nevertheless, blood is thicker than water, as anyone knows who has tasted both.”

“It’s a lifelong failing: she has never been prepared. But how can you have a sense of wonder if you’re prepared for everything? Prepared for the sunset. Prepared for the moonrise. Prepared for the ice storm. What a flat existence that would be.”

“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.”

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

“We've learned to see the world in gasps.”

“He stops, looks up at this window, and I can see the white oblong of his face. We look at each other. I have no rose to toss, he has no lute. But it's the same kind of hunger.”

“If you want what's in the package you should at least know how to get the string off, is what I say.”

“Anyway, maybe there weren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. It never learned, it made the same cretinous mistakes over and over, trading short-term gain for long-term pain.”

“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.”

“What breaks in daybreak? Is it the night? Is it the sun, cracked in two by the horizon like an egg, spilling out light?”

“expectation isn't the same as desire”

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

“You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can’t get me out of the story. I’m the plot, babe, and don’t ever forget it.”

“I tell, therefore you are.”

“Last year I abstained
this year I devour

without guilt
which is also an art”

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