Alias Grace

by Margaret Atwood

For if the world treats you well, Sir, you come to believe you are deserving of it.

A cold hand and a steady eye were what was required. Those who felt too deeply for the patient’s suffering were the ones in whose fingers the knife slipped. The afflicted did not need your compassion, but your skill.

But surely the form of a prayer does not matter, and the only distinction God makes is between good will and ill; or so I have come to believe.

Mr. Kinnear was never a man to pay any attention to gossip, as he didn’t care a pin what other people said about him. He had his own money and was not running for political office, and could afford to ignore such things.

I was scarcely more than a child at the time, although I thought myself a grown woman, having my own money that I earned myself.

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?

Marriage never did any good, as far as I can see; for if the two are of a mind to keep together, they will; and if not, then one of them will run off, and that’s the long and short of it.