All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. All of them? Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves, so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.

— Margaret Atwood

All this will happen because people have neglected the basic lessons of Science, they have gone in for politics and religion and wars instead, and sought out passionate excuses for killing one another. Science on the other hand is dispassionate and without bias, it is the only universal language. The language is numbers. When at last we are up to our ears in death and garbage, we will look to Science to clean up our mess.

— Margaret Atwood

All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.

— Margaret Atwood

A lot of people call you a feminist painter."" What indeed," I say. "I hate party lines, I hate ghettos. Anyway. I'm too old to have invented it, and you're too young to understand it, so what's the point of discussing it at all?

— Margaret Atwood

Also, I could hear Amanda’s voice: Why are you being so weak? Love’s never a fair trade. So Jimmy’s tired of you, so what, there’s guys all over the place like germs, and you can pick them like flowers and toss them away when they’re wilted. But you have to act like you’re having a spectacular time and every day’s a party.

— Margaret Atwood

Also, she went in for culture, which gave her a certain moral authority. It wouldn't now; but people believed, then, that culture could make you better - a better person. They believed it could uplift you, or the women believed it. They hadn't yet seen Hitler at the opera house.

— Margaret Atwood

Am I shallow? She asks the mirror. Yes, I am shallow. The sun shines on the ripples where it's shallow. Deep is too dark.

— Margaret Atwood

And if I talk to him, I'll say something wrong, give something away. I can feel it coming, a betrayal of myself.

— Margaret Atwood

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

And the vampires. You used to know where you stood with them – smelly, evil, undead – but now there are virtuous vampires and disreputable vampires, and sexy vampires and glittery vampires, and none of the old rules about them are true anymore. Once you could depend on garlic, and on the rising sun, and on crucifixes. You could get rid of the vampires once and for all. But not anymore.

— Margaret Atwood