Alias Grace

by Margaret Atwood

there they pay a great lip service to democracy, just as here they rant on about the right order of society, and loyalty to the Queen; though the poor man is poor on every shore.

A man with any spirit in him likes a challenge, and to outwit others;

the left hand was the hand of dreams.

I did not know you were religious, I said. Nor am I, said he; but so far as I can tell it is not required. Many of the preachers there have no more faith in God than a stone.

For if people wish to believe a thing, and long for it and depend on it to be true, and feel the better for it, is it cheating to help them to their own belief, by such an insubstantial thing as a name? Is it not rather a charity, and a human kindness?

ill words butter no parsnips.

This must stop, he tells himself. This can’t go on. But nothing has been going on, and therefore nothing can stop.

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.

he who pays the piper calls the tune.

As I’ve said, Sir, she was in the family way, and it often happens like that with a man; they’ll change from a woman in that condition to one who is not, and it’s the same with cows and horses;

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.

having a thought is not the same as doing it. If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.”

I’d heard that the dead would come back to complete what they had left undone,

And I looked up at the sky, which did not have a cloud in it, and was filled with stars; and it seemed so close I could touch it, and so delicate I could put my hand right through it, like a spiderweb spangled with dewdrops.

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.

once people make their minds up that you have done a crime, then anything you do is taken as proof of it;

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.

there are some that take pleasure in the distress of a fellow-mortal, and most especially if they think that fellow-mortal has committed a sin, which adds an extra relish. But which among us has not sinned, as the Bible tells us?

A prison does not only lock its inmates inside, it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.

respectability in a woman, as he’s now discovered, complicates things considerably.

A cheap whore is cheap not because she’s ugly or old, but because she’s a bad actress.

Everyone knows you’ll lose, because there’s no doubt as to their guilt; but it will be the style in which you lose that will count. There is graceless losing, and there is elegant losing. Let us see you lose as elegantly as possible.

Fear is a remarkable aphrodisiac; I advise you to try it some time.

Find a maiden chained to a rock and about to be devoured by a monster, rescue her, then have her yourself.

guilt comes to you not from the things you’ve done, but from the things that others have done to you.

As it says in the Bible, For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face. If it is face to face, there must be two looking.

The graves he seeks are obvious. Each has a wooden picket fence around it, the only such fences in the graveyard: to keep the occupants penned in, no doubt, since the murdered have the reputation of walking.

Wisps of mist float here and there above the fields, dissipating like dreams in the rising light. The air is hazy, the roadside weeds hung with dew; the horse snatches mouthfuls of them as it passes.

we are what we remember.”

“Perhaps,” says Simon, “we are also—preponderantly—what we forget.”

The night is clear and warm, with a moon, almost full, enclosed in a nimbus of mist; the air smells of mown grass and horse manure, with an undertone of dog.

What Americans prefer above all is the appearance of comfort, in any sort of institution at all.

As in schools for children, those who must be impressed are not the actual inmates, but those who pay the bills.

What is believed in society, is not always the equivalent of what is true; but as regards a woman’s reputation, it amounts to the same thing.

It is not a good plan to marry a man you do not love, but many do and get used to it in time. And others marry from love and repent at leisure, as they say.

There are some men, especially of the simpler kind, that prefer their wives to be plain rather than handsome, as that sort buckles down to the work and complains less, and there is not a great chance of their running off with another man,

Yes, she said, it is really true. You are pardoned! I am so happy for you! I could see that she felt some tears were in order, and I shed several.

I tossed and turned, and somehow I couldn’t get comfortable, I guess comfort is what you’re accustomed to, and by that time I was more accustomed to my narrow prison bed than to a spare bedroom with clean sheets. The room was so large it was almost frightening to me, and I pulled the sheet up over my head to make it darker; and then I felt as if my face was dissolving and turning into someone else’s face,

That is it, I thought. I have been rescued, and now I must act like someone who has been rescued. And so I tried.

It took me some days to get used to the idea; indeed, I am not quite used to it yet. It calls for a different arrangement of the face; but I suppose it will become easier in time.

Bonnets were gone, too. Now it was all hats, tied under the chin and quite flat and tilted forward, like a ship sailing on top of your head, with veils floating out behind them like the wake.

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.

while dressing for the journey I’d felt more numb than anything, and the objects around me appeared flat and lacking in colour, but now all sprang to life. The sun was shining and every stone of the wall seemed as clear as glass and lighted up like a lamp, it was like passing through the gates of Hell and into Paradise, I do believe the two are located closer together than most people think.

Outside the gates was a chestnut tree, and each leaf of it seemed rimmed by fire; and sitting in the tree there were three white pigeons, which shone like the angels of Pentecost, and at that moment I knew that I had truly been set free.

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.

The front of our house faces southwest and the sunlight is warm and golden, although I do not sit right in it, as it is bad for the complexion. On such days I think, This is like Heaven. Although Heaven was not a place I ever used to think of myself as going.

I have been married to Mr. Walsh for almost a year now, and although it is not what most girls imagine when young, that is perhaps for the better, as at least the two of us know what sort of a bargain we have got into. When people marry young they often change as they grow older, but as the two of us have already grown older there will not be as much disappointment in store.

it’s never a good idea to nag and push a man, as it only makes them the more obstinate.

Mr. Walsh wanted to employ a girl as well, but I said I would prefer to do the work of the house myself. I wouldn’t want to have a servant living in, as they pry too much, and listen at doors;

as Mary Whitney used to say, a little white lie such as the angels tell is a small price to pay for peace and quiet.