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Book: The Blind Assassin
Quotes of Book: The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood _ The Blind Assassin
What is the real breath of a man-the breathing out or the breathing in? Suchwas the nature of the gods
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Margaret Atwood _ The Blind Assassin
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. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It's all the same impulse. What do we hope from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simply attention, of any kind we can get?At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.
book-quote fear longing powerful
Margaret Atwood _ The Blind Assassin
What would that be like - to long, to yearn for someone who is right there before your eyes, day in and day out?
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Margaret Atwood _ The Blind Assassin
As with so much else, she was convinced that an exception would be made in her case.
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Margaret Atwood _ The Blind Assassin
Many believed what they were told: that the welfare of the entire kingdom depended on their selflessness.
book-quote welfare
Margaret Atwood _ The Blind Assassin
I expect he did it awkwardly, but awkwardness in men was a sign of sincerity then.
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Margaret Atwood _ The Blind Assassin
You shouldn't have forged my handwriting," I said to Laura privately. "I couldn't forge Richard's. It's too different from ours. Yours was a lot easier." "Handwriting is a personal thing. It's like stealing.
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Margaret Atwood _ The Blind Assassin
God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, as Reenie used to say. Could it be that Myra is my designated guardian angel? Or is she instead a foretaste of Purgatory? And how do you tell the difference?
book-quote good-vs-evil purgatory
Margaret Atwood _ The Blind Assassin
buttons were made from wood and bone, and the fancier ones from cow horns. These last two materials could be obtained for next to nothing from the several abattoirs in the vicinity, and as for the wood, it lay all round about, clogging up the land, and
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Margaret Atwood _ The Blind Assassin
She's on some mission or other - feeding the Third World poor, soothing the dying; expiating the sins of the rest of us. A fruitless task - our sins are a bottomless pit, and there's lots more there they came from. But that's God's point, she'd doubtless argue - the fruitlessness. He's always liked futility. He thinks it's noble.She takes after Laura in that respect: the same tendency towards absolutism, the same refusal to compromise, the same scorn for the grosser human failings. To get away with that, you have to be beautiful. Otherwise it seems mere peevishness.
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Margaret Atwood _ The Blind Assassin
Some of the best things are done by those with nowhere to turn, by those who don't have time, by those who truly understand the word helpless. They dispense with the calculation of risk and profit, they take no thought for the future, they're forced at spearpoint into the present tense. Thrown over a precipice, you fall or else you fly; you clutch at any hope, however unlikely; however - if I may use such an overworked word - miraculous. What we mean by that is, Against all odds.
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Margaret Atwood _ The Blind Assassin
The picture is of happiness, the story not. 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.
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