The Door Quotes

“It must have been an endless breathing in: between the wish to know and the wish to praise there was no seam.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Door

“Anyway, my dearest one, we still have the moon.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Door

“Dutiful

How did I get so dutiful? Was I always that way?
Going around as a child with a small broom and dustpan,
sweeping up dirt I didn't make,
or out into the yard with a stunted rake,,
weeding the gardens of others
-the dirt blew back, the weeds flourished, despite my efforts-
and all the while with a frown of disapproval
for other people's fecklessness, and my own slavery.
I didn't perform these duties willingly.
I wanted to be on the river, or dancing,
but something had me by the back of the neck.
That's me too, years later, a purple-eyed wreck,
because whatever had to be finished wasn't, and I stayed late,
grumpy as a snake, on too much coffee,
and further on still, those groups composed of mutterings
and scoldings, and the set-piece exhortation:
somebody ought to do something!
That was my hand shooting up.

But I've resigned. I've ditched the grip of my echo.
I've decided to wear sunglasses, and a necklace
adorned with the gold word NO,
and eat flowers I didn't grow.
Still, why do I feel so responsible
for the wailing from shattered houses,
for birth defects and unjust wars,
and the soft, unbearable sadness
filtering down from distant stars?”
― Margaret Atwood, The Door

“In ten years, you'll be on a stamp /
where anyone at all can lick you.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Door

“I've cut myself off.
I can feel the place where I used o be attached.
It's raw, as when you grate your finger. It's a shredded mess of images. It hurts.
But where exactly on me
is this torn-off stem?
Now here, now there.

Meanwhile the other girl,
the one with the memory,
is coming nearer and nearer.
She's catching up to me,
trailing behind her, like red smoke,
the rope we share.”
― Margaret Atwood , The Door

“Oh dead beautiful woman”
― Margaret Atwood, The Door

“The effort of saying nothing is wearing him down.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Door

“Heart

Some people sell their blood. You sell your heart.
It was either that or the soul.
The hard part is getting the damn thing out.
A kind of twisting motion, like shucking an oyster,
your spine a wrist,
and then, hup! it's in your mouth.
You turn yourself partially inside out
like a sea anemone coughing a pebble.
There's a broken plop, the racket
of fish guts into a pail,
and there it is, a huge glistening deep-red clot of the still-alive past, whole on the plate.

It gets passed around. It's slithery. It gets dropped,
but also tasted. Too coarse, says one. Too salty.
Too sour, says another making a face.
Each on is an instant gourmet,
and you stand listening to all this
in the corner, like a newly hired waiter,
your diffident, skillful hand on the wound hidden
deep in your shirt and chest,
shyly, heartless.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Door