The Year of the Flood Quotes

“Why do we want other people to like us, even if we don’t really care about them all that much?”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“Maybe that’s what love is, I thought: it’s being pissed off.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“May I remind you all about the importance of hand-washing, seven times a day at least, and after every encounter with a stranger. It is never too early to practice this essential precaution.
Avoid anyone who is sneezing.”
― Margaret Atwood, 홍수의 해

“Beware of words. Be careful what you write. Leave no trails.
This is what the Gardener’s taught us, when I was a child among them. They told us to depend on memory, because nothing written down could be relied on. The Spirit travels from mouth to mouth, not from thing to thing: books could be burnt, paper crumble away, computers could be destroyed. Only the Spirit lives forever, and the Spirit isn’t a thing.”
― Margaret Atwood, 홍수의 해

“It’s kind of shocking to hear Toby called a babe: sort of like calling God a studmuffin.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“She found herself crying with relief and gratitude. It was as if a large, benevolent hand had reached down and picked her up, and was holding her safe.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“Other religions have taught that this World is to be rolled up like a scroll and burnt to nothingness, and that a new Heaven and a new Earth will then appear. But why would God give us another Earth when we have mistreated this one so badly?”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“The Saints of this day are all Wayfarers. They knew so well that it is better to journey than to arrive, as long as we journey in firm faith and for selfless ends. Let us hold that thought in our hearts, my Friends and fellow Voyagers.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering, Mine! Mine!”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“But the life of the Spirit always seems foolish to those who do not share it: therefore we must accept and wear the label of God’s Fools gladly, for in relation to God we are all fools, no matter how wise we may think we are. To be an April Fish is to humbly accept our own silliness, and to cheerfully admit the absurdity — from a materialist view — of every Spiritual truth we profess.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“time is not a thing that passes, said Pilar: it’s a sea on which you float.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“It’s make-believe. Wishful thinking, I know I shouldn’t do it: I should face reality. But reality has too much darkness in it. Too many crows.
The Adams and the Eves used to say, We are what we eat, but I prefer to say, We are what we wish. Because if you can’t wish, why bother?”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“The edge of the forest. She’d like to avoid going in there, among the trees. Nature may be dumb as a sack of hammers, Zeb used to say, but it’s smarter than you.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“Glenn used to say the reason you can’t really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, “I’ll be dead,” you’ve said the word I, and so you’re still alive inside the sentence. And that’s how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul — it was a consequence of grammar. And so was God, because as soon as there’s a past tense, there has to be a past before the past, and you keep going back in time until you get to I don’t know, and that’s what God is. It’s what you don’t know — the dark, the hidden, the underside of the visible, and all because we have grammar, and grammar would be impossible without the FoxP2 gene; so God is a brain mutation, and that gene is the same one birds need for singing. So music is built in, Glenn said: it’s knitted into us. It would be very hard to amputate it because it’s an essential part of us, like water.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“The alterations hadn’t made her stunningly beautiful, but that wasn’t the object. The object was to make her more invisible. Beauty is only skin deep, she thought. But why did they always say only?”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“Lurking insubordination, thought Toby: he’s tired of being the Beta Chimp.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“Surely I was an optimistic person back then, she thinks. Back there. I woke up whistling. I knew there were things wrong in the world, they were referred to, I’d seen them in the onscreen news. But the wrong things were wrong somewhere else.
By the time she’d reached college, the wrongness had moved closer. She remembers the oppressive sensation, like waiting all the time for a heavy stone footfall, then the knock at the door. Everybody knew. Nobody admitted to knowing. If other people began to discuss it, you tuned them out, because what they were saying was both so obvious and so unthinkable.
We’re using up the Earth. It’s almost gone. You can’t live with such fears and keep on whistling. The waiting builds up in you like a tide. You start wanting it to be done with. You find yourself saying to the sky, Just do it. Do your worst. Get it over with. She could feel the coming tremor of it running through her spine, asleep or awake. It never went away, even among the Gardeners. Especially — as time wore on — among the Gardeners.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“The Gardeners were right about that part: reading someone else’s secret words does give you power over them.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“If she came too close to such territory Toby would be granted a smile and a change of subject, and a hint that she might try avoiding the original sin of desiring too much knowledge, or possibly too much power. Because the two were connected — didn’t dear Toby agree?”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“This was guesswork: it hadn’t taken Toby long to realize that the Gardeners did not welcome personal questions. Where you’d come from, what you’d done before — all of that was irrelevant, their manner implied. Only the Now counted. Say about others as you would have them say about you. In other words, nothing.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“Then God establishes his Covenant with Noah, and with his sons, “and with every living creature.” Many recall the Covenant with Noah, but forget the Covenant with all other living Beings. However, God does not forget it. He repeats the terms “all flesh” and “every living creature” a number of times, to make sure we get the point.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“Then God says a noteworthy thing. He says, “And the fear of you” — that is, Man — “and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air … into your hand are they delivered.” Genesis 9:2. This is not God telling Man that he has a right to destroy all the Animals, as some claim. Instead it is a warning to God’s beloved Creatures: Beware of Man, and of his evil heart.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“At the first Creation all was rejoicing, but the second event was qualified: God was no longer so well pleased. He knew something had gone very wrong with his last experiment, Man, but that it was too late for him to fix it. “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite every thing living, as I have done,” say the Human Words of God in Genesis 8:21.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“Tawdry rubbish, all of it, the Eves would say. If you’re going to sell your soul, at least demand a higher price! Bernice and I paid no attention to that. Our souls didn’t interest us.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“What commandment did we disobey? The commandment to live the Animal life in all simplicity — without clothing, so to speak. But we craved the knowledge of good and evil, and we obtained that knowledge, and now we are reaping the whirlwind. In our efforts to rise above ourselves we have indeed fallen far, and are falling farther still; for, like the Creation, the Fall, too, is ongoing. Ours is a fall into greed: why do we think that everything on Earth belongs to us, while in reality we belong to Everything? We have betrayed the trust of the Animals, and defiled our sacred task of stewardship. God’s commandment to “replenish the Earth” did not mean we should fill it to overflowing with ourselves, thus wiping out everything else. How many other Species have we already annihilated? Insofar as you do it unto the least of God’s Creatures, you do it unto Him. Please consider that, my Friends, the next time you crush a Worm underfoot or disparage a Beetle!”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“The answer can only be that God has given Adam free will, and therefore Adam may do things that God Himself cannot anticipate in advance. Think of that the next time you are tempted by meat-eating or material wealth! Even God may not always know what you are going to do next!”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“What I write is my name, Ren, with an eyebrow pencil, on the wall beside the mirror. I’ve written it a lot of times. Renrenren, like a song. You can forget who you are if you’re alone too much. Amanda told me that.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“Postoje dvije šalice za ispijanje života, podučavala je Nuala dječicu. Čak i ako je u svakoj posve isti sadržaj, okus je posve drugačiji!
Šalica "ne" puna je gorčine, šalica "da" puna je slatkoće- Recite, da vas čujem: koju šalicu svatko hoće?”
― Margaret Atwood, 홍수의 해

“although they all did stuff like yoga and said it was Spiritual, they were really just twisted, fish-crunching, materialistic body-worshippers out there, with facelifts and bimplants and genework and totally warped values.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“Go forth, therefore! Leap! Run! Roar! Lurk! Spring! For I delight in your dread hearts, and in the gold and green jewels of your eyes, and in your well-fashioned sinews, and in your scissor teeth and your scimitar claws, which I Myself have bestowed upon you.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood