Alias Grace

by Margaret Atwood

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.

It is remarkable how frequently military men, when retired on half-pay, go to the bad; it is as if, having become habituated to strong excitements and violent emotions, they must duplicate them in civilian life.

When you are sad it is best to change the subject.

the old rule of thumb, that when a handsome woman walks in through the door, good judgment flies out through the window.

There is no fool like an educated fool,

loneliness in a woman is like hunger in a dog.

To heal humanity one must know it, and one cannot know it from a distance; one must rub elbows with it, so to speak. He considers it the duty of those in his profession to probe life’s uttermost depths, and although he has not probed very many of them as yet, he has at least made a beginning. He’d taken, of course, all proper precautions against disease.

There must be a certain freedom in not having a good name to lose.

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.

The line of her cheek has a marble, a classic, simplicity; to look at her is to believe that suffering does indeed purify.

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.

My mother and Aunt Pauline called it the lost baby, and when I was little I wondered where it had been lost, because I thought it was lost the way you would lose a penny; and if it had been lost, then perhaps it might someday be found.

She did so long to be decent again, and for us to be decent as well. But it is very hard, Sir, to be decent, without proper clothes.

When I was quite young, six or seven, I put my hand on my mother’s belly, which was all round and tight, and I said What is in there, another mouth to feed, and my mother smiled sadly and said Yes I fear so, and I had a picture of an enormous mouth, on a head like the flying angel heads on the gravestones, but with teeth and all, eating away at my mother from the inside, and I began to cry because I thought it would kill her.

those who are depressed in spirits are more likely to consider bad omens.

But there is nothing like a strong bout of seasickness to remove the desire for a scrap; and those who would cheerfully have cut each other’s throats on land, were often to be seen holding each other’s heads over the scuppers, like the tenderest of mothers;

in this world you have to take your bits and ends of kindness where you can find them, as they do not grow on trees.

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

The difference between a civilized man and a barbarous fiend—a madman, say—lies, perhaps, merely in a thin veneer of willed self-restraint.

Mary said I had to wash my hair as well; and though it was true that washing it too much would take all the strength out of your body, and she had known a girl who had faded away and died from too much hair washing, still it needed to be done every three or four months;

The small details of life often hide a great significance.

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.

The truth is that she sometimes took things without asking, which made me nervous; though she said it was not stealing as long as you put the things back after. But sometimes she didn’t do that either.

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.

I bundled the sheet and the nightdress together and took them down to the laundry, and pumped a tub full of cold water, because it’s the cold water you need to get out the blood, as the hot will set it.

The afflicted did not need your compassion, but your skill.

As Mary used to say, there are some of the masters who think you owe them service twenty-four hours a day, and should do the main work flat on your back.

The pump for the water was in the courtyard between the two kitchens; I was pleased it was not an open well, as such wells are more dangerous, things can fall down into them and they often harbour rats.

They did not keep a pig and I was just as glad, for pigs are too clever for their own good, and fond of escaping from their pens, as well as having a smell that is not at all agreeable.

Peacock feathers inside the house are bad luck, as everyone knows. These were only in a picture, but I would never have allowed them in any house of mine.

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. In that way they are like children, they do not have to think ahead, or worry about the consequences of what they do. But it is not their fault, it is only how they are brought up.

I liked being early to rise; that way I could pretend for a little while that the house was my own.

I would never kill a spider. Mary Whitney said it would bring bad luck, and she was not the only one to say so. When I found one inside the house I would pick it up on the end of the broom and shake it off outside, but I must have killed some of them by accident, because I got the bad luck anyway.

One rooster a flock keeps the hens happy, they say, but one was too many as far as I was concerned.

it is harder to work for a woman who has once been a servant herself, than one who has not; because those who have been servants will have their own ways of doing things, and they will also know the shortcuts,

and sometimes, when I have seen the pure white clouds billowing in the sky after a rain, I used to think that it was as if the angels themselves were hanging out their washing;

So there I was, pretending not to watch, and there he was, pretending not to be watched; and you may see the very same thing, Sir, at any polite gathering of society ladies and gentlemen.

It was a lovely and windless evening, and the birds were twittering, and the trees in the orchard near the road were golden in the late sunlight, and the purple milkweed flowers that grew beside the drive smelled very sweetly; and also the last few peonies beside the verandah, and the climbing roses; and the coolness came down out of the air, while Jamie sat and played on his flute, so plaintively it did your heart good.

like most gentlemen he often wants a thing to mean more than it does.

Those who have been in trouble themselves are alert to it in others,

I thought, there will be trouble ahead; as is always the case, when one loves, and the other does not.

if you could not get Divine Grace by praying for it, or any other way, or ever know if you had it or not, then you might as well forget about the whole matter, and go about your own business, because whether you would be damned or saved was no concern of yours. There is no use crying over spilt milk if you don’t know whether the milk is spilt or not, and if God alone knew, then God alone could tidy it up if necessary.

once the horse was out of the stable it was no good shutting the barn door, and a woman once on her back was like a turtle in the same plight, she could scarcely turn herself right side up again, and was fair game for all.

The road to death is a lonely highway, and longer than it appears, even when it leads straight down from the scaffold, by way of a rope; and it’s a dark road, with never any moon shining on it, to light your way.

there is something depressing to the spirits about a birthday, especially when alone;

thoughts about God often make me drowsy;

I don’t know why it is, a girl of fifteen or sixteen is accounted a woman, but a boy of fifteen or sixteen is still a boy.

In a new country, friends become old friends very quickly.

The future lies hid in the present, for those that can read it.

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.