The best quotes by the author we have brought to you
“A faithless preacher with a good manner and voice will always convert more than a limp-handed long-faced fool, no matter how godly.” (Alias Grace Quotes)
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“A great fear came over me, and my body went entirely cold, and I stood as if paralyzed with fear; for I knew that the horse was no earthly horse, but the pale horse that will be sent at the Day of Reckoning, and the rider of it is Death; and it was Death himself who stood behind me, with his arms wrapped around me as tight as iron bands, and his lipless mouth kissing my neck as if in love. But as well as the horror, I also felt a strange longing.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“A Log Cabin quilt is a thing every young woman should have before marriage, as it means the home; and there is always a red square at the centre, which means the hearth fire.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“A prison does not only lock its inmates inside, it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“A woman like me is always a temptation, if possible to arrange it unobserved; as whatever we may say about it later, we will not be believed.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“And I wondered what would become of me, and comforted myself that in a hundred years I would be dead and at peace, and in my grave; and I thought it might be less trouble altogether, to be in it a good deal sooner than that.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“And then she began to cry, and when I asked her why she was doing that, she said it was because I was to have a happy ending, and it was just like a book; and I wondered what books she’d been reading.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“And there we were, in a kind of harmony; and the evening was so beautiful, that it made a pain in my heart, as when you cannot tell whether you are happy or sad; and I thought that if I could have a wish, it would be that nothing would ever change, and we could stay that way forever.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“Because you may think a bed is a peaceful thing, Sir, and to you it may mean rest and comfort and a good night’s sleep. But it isn’t so for everyone; and there are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“For if the world treats you well, Sir, you come to believe you are deserving of it.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“Gone mad is what they say, and sometimes Run mad, as if mad is a different direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don’t go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“He doesn’t understand yet that guilt comes to you not from the things you’ve done, but from the things that others have done to you.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“Heaven, for the Presbyterians, must resemble a banking establishment, with each soul tagged and docketed, and placed in the appropriate pigeonhole.” (Alias Grace Quotes)
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“Help is what they offer but gratitude is what they want, they roll around in it like cats in the catnip.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“I did not give him a straight answer, because saying what you really want out loud brings bad luck, and then the good thing will never happen. It might not happen anyway, but just to make sure, you should be careful about saying what you want or even wanting anything, as you may be punished for it.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“I stand holding the apple in both hands. It feels precious, like a heavy treasure. I lift it up and smell it. It has such an odour of outdoors on it I want to cry.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“I would never blame a human creature for feeling lonely.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided by one.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“It is always a mistake to curse back openly at those who are stronger than you unless there is a fence between.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“It is my opinion that they sometimes take what is intended for us, which would not surprise me in the least, as it is dog eat dog around here and they are the bigger dogs.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“It is shocking how many crimes the Bible contains. The Governor’s wife should cut them all out and paste them into her scrapbook.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“Murderess, murderess, he whispers to himself. It has an allure, a scent almost. Hothouse gardenias. Lurid, but also furtive. He imagines himself breathing it as he draws Grace towards him, pressing his mouth against her. Murderess. He applies it to her throat like a brand.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“My mother said Aunt Pauline meant kindly but had standards, which were all very well for those that could afford them.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“Of course you have always been an idealist, and filled with your optimistic dreams; but reality must at some time obtrude, and you are now turned thirty.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“On my Tree of Paradise, I intend to put a border of snakes entwined; they will look like vines or just a cable pattern to others, as I will make the eyes very small, but they will be snakes to me; as without a snake or two, the main part of the story would be missing.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“Romantic people are not supposed to laugh, I know that much from looking at the pictures.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“The door of Reverend Verringer’s impressive manse is opened by an elderly female with a face like a pine plank; the Reverend is unmarried, and has need of an irreproachable housekeeper. Simon is ushered into the library. It is so self-consciously the right sort of library that he has an urge to set fire to it.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“The small details of life often hide a great significance.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“The way I understand things, the Bible may have been thought out by God, but it was written down by men. And like everything men write down, such as the newspapers, they got the main story right but some of the details wrong.” (Alias Grace Quotes)
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“There is no fool like an educated fool…”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“There must be a certain freedom in not having a good name to lose.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“This puts him in an instructive mood, and I can see he is going to teach me something, which gentlemen are fond of doing.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“Those who have been in trouble themselves are alert to it in others”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“To be rendered unconscious; to lie exposed, without shame, at the mercy of others; to be touched, incised, plundered, remade – this is what they are thinking of when they look at him, with their widening eyes and slightly parted lips.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“To go from a familiar thing, however undesirable, into the unknown, is always a matter for apprehension, and I suppose that is why so many people are afraid to die.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“Today she wears her habitual expression of strained anxiety; she smells of violets.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“When I was younger I used to think that if I could hug myself tight enough I could make myself smaller, because there was never enough room for me, at home or anywhere, but if I was smaller then I would fit in.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“When 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 Atwood
Alias Grace
“Where there’s a doctor it’s always a bad sign. Even when they are not doing the killing themselves it means a death is close, and in that way they are like ravens or crows.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
“You should never let your picture be in a magazine or newspaper if you can help it, as you never know what ends your face may be made to serve, by others, once it has got out of your control.”
Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace
