Michelle Koleva > Michelle's Quotes

“Don't let the bastards grind you down.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.
We lived in the gaps between the stories.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.
Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“I am not your justification for existence.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city. Maybe night falls because it’s heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes. Wool blanket.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“I wish I was ignorant, so I didn't know how ignorant I am”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending...
But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone.
You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“War is what happens when language fails.”
― Margaret Atwood

“We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Stop trying to change someone who does not want to change. Stop giving chances to someone who abuses your forgiveness. Stop walking back to the place where your heart ran from. Stop trusting their words and ignoring their actions. Stop breaking your own heart.”
― Trent Shelton

“Everybody isn't your friend. Just because they hang around you and laugh with you doesn't mean they're for you. Just because they say they got got your back, doesn't mean they won't stab you in it. People pretend well. Jealousy sometimes doesn't live far. So know your circle. At the end of the day real situations expose fake people so pay attention.”
― Trent Shelton

“Those that are meant to be in your life won’t degrade you, judge you, or talk about you, because they’re too busy loving you and uplifting you. If you put your faith in fickle opinions you’ll never be good enough.  Focus on God’s truth and purpose for your life and you’ll find your perfect self”
― Trent Shelton, You're Perfect: for the Heart that's meant to Love You

“You’ll never live up to the standards of what “everyone” wants you to be, so why fight a battle you can never win.  Instead focus on being MORE of who you’re meant to be and focus less on what THEY think you should be.  You might not see your own beauty but if you continue to conceal and hide who you are, the heart that’s for you won’t be able to find it either.”
― Trent Shelton, You're Perfect: for the Heart that's meant to Love You

“Words lie. Actions can lie too. Consistency speaks the truth.”
― Trent Shelton

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly

“I'm tired of this back-slappin' "isn't humanity neat" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes.”
― Bill Hicks

“I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.”
― Samuel Johnson

“I believe that there is an equality to all humanity. We all suck.”
― Bill Hicks

“You always feel like you are the only one in the world, like everyone else is crazy for each other, but it's not true. Generally, people don't like each other very much. And that goes for friends, too.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“You call me a misanthrope because I avoid society. You err; I love society. Yet in order not to hate people, I must avoid their company.”
― Caspar David Friedrich