Love was like a steamroller. There was no avoiding it; it went over you and you came out flat.
Margaret AtwoodI'm interested in the Gothic novel because it's very much a woman's form. Why is there such a wide readership for books that essentially say, 'Your husband is trying to kill you'?
Margaret AtwoodWhen you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.
Margaret AtwoodTo live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self.
Margaret AtwoodThe biggest debt is always the government debt; it's always debt that government has run up on your behalf.
Margaret AtwoodThere's more private security in the United States than there are publicly funded forces, like police. What you don't want is a meld of government and commerce - you really want to keep those two things separate - because once you have that meld, you've got megacorruption, and you have no third force to whom you can say this stuff is poisoning our kids.
Margaret Atwood