Alias Grace

by Margaret Atwood

I don’t know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again.

It is shocking how many crimes the Bible contains. The Governor’s wife should cut them all out and paste them into her scrapbook.

People dressed in a certain kind of clothing are never wrong. Also they never fart.

He must mean that he has come to test me, although he’s too late for that, as God has done a great deal of testing of me already, and you would think he would be tired of it by now.

That is how they get in through the door. Help is what they offer but gratitude is what they want, they roll around in it like cats in the catnip.

His father was self-made, but his mother was constructed by others, and such edifices are notoriously fragile.

They have been talking to each other all this time, and not to me. They are a low class of person.

She is not afraid of me, she doesn’t mind me or care what I may have done, even if I killed a gentleman; she only nods, as if to say, So that’s one less of them.

He keeps forgetting he is no longer rich, and therefore no longer entirely his own man.

As a rule, Simon avoids her type of attenuated and quietly distraught female, although doctors attract such women like magnets.

It takes a perverse talent to maltreat an egg so completely.

It is so self-consciously the right sort of library that he has an urge to set fire to it.

Simon notes to himself that, although tadpole-mouthed, Reverend Verringer is no fool.

“No matter what science may accomplish in the future, the Devil will always be at large.

So he is under no illusions as to the innate refinement of women; but all the more reason to safeguard the purity of those still pure. In such a cause, hypocrisy is surely justified: one must present what ought to be true as if it really is.

They are now so young in relation to Simon that he has trouble conversing with them; it’s like talking to a basketful of kittens.

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.

I don’t recall the place very well, as I was a child when I left it; only in scraps, like a plate that’s been broken. There are always some pieces that would seem to belong to another plate altogether; and then there are the empty spaces, where you cannot fit anything in.

Aunt Pauline was always telling her to stand up to my father, and my father would tell her to stand up to Aunt Pauline, and between the two of them they squashed her flat.

So my mother and my father each felt trapped by the other.

He had no wish to humiliate my father, only to see the last of him.

It is always a mistake to curse back openly at those who are stronger than you unless there is a fence between.

Women help each other; caring for the afflicted is their sphere. They make beef tea and jellies. They knit comforting shawls. They pat and soothe.

This puts him in an instructive mood, and I can see he is going to teach me something, which gentlemen are fond of doing.

Well, I suppose we all need a little hope now and then, he says. I am on the point of saying that I have been getting along without it for some time, but I refrain;

He had so many gold watch-chains and gold pins and gold snuffboxes and other trinkets, you could have got five necklaces out of him if he was melted down, with the earrings to match.

and said that some called it Eve’s curse but she thought that was stupid, and the real curse of Eve was having to put up with the nonsense of Adam, who as soon as there was any trouble, blamed it all on her.

I am afraid he was very much indulged, not least by himself. For if the world treats you well, Sir, you come to believe you are deserving of it.

He feels as if he’s been ambushed by a flowering shrub.

Men such as him do not have to clean up the messes they make, but we have to clean up our own messes, and theirs into the bargain.

Mr. Kinnear said I was very inquisitive for such a young person, and soon he would have the most learned maidservant in Richmond Hill, and he would have to put me on display, and charge money for me, like the mathematical pig in Toronto.

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.

Today when I woke up there was a beautiful pink sunrise, with the mist lying over the fields like a white soft cloud of muslin, and the sun shining through the layers of it all blurred and rosy like a peach gently on fire.

In the whole song, the poor pig was the only one who did no wrong, but it was also the only one who died. Many songs, I have noticed, are unfair in this way.

But I did not like the drifting look in her eyes, or the falling note in her voice; and I thought, there will be trouble ahead; as is always the case, when one loves, and the other does not.

Once a man gets a habit it is hard to break, he said. It’s like a dog gone to the bad—once a sheep is killed, the dog will get a taste for it, and must kill another.

With the crows they are deciding which parts they will tear open and make off with, and so it is with the doctors.

It is alarming how quickly one descends into squalor. Something must be done soon, some slave or lackey acquired.

can’t stop it from breaking in the same way it always does, and then from lying there broken; always the same day, which comes around again like clockwork.

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.

“I said, What do you want here, but he did not answer, he just kept on being silver, so I went out to milk the cow; because the only thing to do about God is to go on with what you were doing anyway, since you can’t ever stop him or get any reasons out of him. There is a Do this or a Do that with God, but not any Because.

She hasn’t refused to talk—far from it. She’s told him a great deal; but she’s told him only what she’s chosen to tell. What he wants is what she refuses to tell; what she chooses perhaps not even to know. Knowledge of guilt, or else of innocence: either could be concealed. But he’ll pry it out of her yet. He’s got the hook in her mouth, but can he pull her out? Up, out of the abyss, up to the light. Out of the deep blue sea.

He regards her with disgust: a woman so porcine, and, in this weather, so distinctly sweaty, should not be permitted out in public. She’s a libel on the entire sex.

It is remarkable, I have since thought, how once a man has a few coins, no matter how he came by them, he thinks right away that he is entitled to them, and to whatever they can buy, and fancies himself cock of the walk.

There is something despicable about betrayal; and I’d felt his heart beating next to mine, and however undesired, still it was a human heart; and I did not wish to have any part in stilling it forever, unless I should be forced to it.

And I thought that things did make sense, and have a design to them, if you only pondered them long enough.

He’s coming to hate the gratitude of women. It is like being fawned on by rabbits, or like being covered with syrup: you can’t get it off. It slows you down, and puts you at a disadvantage. Every time some woman is grateful to him, he feels like taking a cold bath. Their gratitude isn’t real; what they really mean by it is that he should be grateful to them. Secretly they despise him.

Having a mistress—for that’s what she’s become, he supposes, and it hasn’t taken long!—is worse than having a wife. The responsibilities involved are weightier, and more muddled.

Silvery draperies, chained ankles. Breasts like melons. Eyes of gazelles. That such configurations are banal does not rob them of their power.

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.