Lady Oracle Quotes

“How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“I planned my death carefully, unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“Her glass wings are gone.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“I didn't want him to become gray and multi-dimensional and complicated like everyone else. Was every Heathcliff a Linton in disguise?”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“I thought, men who changed their names were likely to be con-men, criminals, undercover agents or magicians, whereas women who changed their names were probably just married.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“She sits on the iron throne
She is one and three
The dark lady
the redgold lady
The blank lady
oracle
of blood, she who must be
obeyed
forever
Her glass wings are gone
She floats down the river
singing her last song”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“and each of his voices left his body in a different colored soul and floated up towards the sun still singing.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“Love was merely a tool, smiles were another tool, they were both just tools for accomplishing certain ends. No magic, merely chemicals. I felt I'd never really loved anyone, not Paul, not Chuck the Royal Porcupine, not even Arthur. I'd polished them with my love and expected them to shine, brightly enough to return my own reflection, enhanced and sparkling.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“My life had a tendency to spread, get flabby, to scroll and festoon like the frame of a baroque mirror, which came from following the line of least resistance. I wanted my death, by contrast, to be neat and simple, understated, even a little severe, like a Quaker church or the basic black dress with a single strand of pearls...”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“Below me, in the foundations of the house, I could hear the clothes I'd buried there growing themselves a body.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“Now I wanted to be acknowledged, but I feared it.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“I grew sodden with light; my skin on the inside glowed a dull red.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“It's no good thinking you're invisible if you aren't”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“A man in a cloud, with icicle teeth and eyes of fire.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“There was always that shadowy twin, thin when i was fat, fat when i was thin, myself in silvery narrative...”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“Was every Heathcliff a Linton in disguise?”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“they lurk passively, like vampire sheep”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“I even spent a certain amount of time worrying about the Spiritualist doctrines: If The Other Side was so wonderful, why did the spirits devote most of their messages to warnings? Instead of telling their loved ones to avoid slippery stairs and unsafe cars and starchy foods, they should have been luring them over cliffs and bridges and into lakes, spurring them on to greater feats of intemperance and gluttony, in order to hasten their passage to the brighter shore.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“He had been with me, but he wasn't with me now, we had been walking along a street like this one and then the future swept over us and we were separated. He was in the distance now, across the ocean, on a beach, the wind ruffling his hair, I could hardly see his features. He was moving at an ever-increasing speed away from me, into the land of the dead, the dead past, irretrievable.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“you can't change the past, Aunt Lou used to say. Oh, but I wanted to; that was the one thing I really wanted to do”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“His view of the world featured swift disasters set against a background of lurking doom, my cooking did nothing to contradict it.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“to fix and make plausible, the nebulous emotions of my costumed heroins, like diamonds on a sea of dough.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“I would pore for hours over the stalls of worn necklaces, sets of gilt spoons, sugar tongs in the shape of hen's feet or midget hands, clocks that didn't work, flowered china, spotty mirrors and ponderous furniture, the flotsam left by those receding centuries in which, more and more, I was living.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“It did make a mess; but then, I don’t think I’ll ever be a very tidy person.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“In a fairy tale I would be one of the two stupid sisters who open the forbidden door and are shocked by the murdered wives, not the third, clever one who keeps to the essentials: presence of mind, foresight, the telling of watertight lies. I told lies but they were not watertight. My mind was not disciplined, as Arthur sometimes pointed out.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“But Arthur couldn’t understand why I would have nightmares. Surely nothing that terrible had ever happened to me, I was a normal girl with all kinds of advantages, I was beautiful and intelligent, why didn’t I make something of myself? I should try to be more of a leader, he would tell me. What he failed to understand was that there were really only two kinds of people: fat ones and thin ones. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn’t see what Arthur saw. The outline of my former body still surrounded me, like a mist, like a phantom moon, like the image of Dumbo the Flying Elephant superimposed on my own. I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“I saw a number of Adult pictures long before I was an adult, but no one ever questioned my age. I was quite fat by this time and all fat women look the same, they all look forty-two. Also, fat women are not more noticeable than thin women; they’re less noticeable, because people find them distressing and look away. To the ushers and the ticket sellers I must’ve appeared as a huge featureless blur. If I’d ever robbed a bank no witness would have been able to describe me accurately.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“A place with no handholds,no landmarks,no past at all:That would have been too much like dying”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle