89 quotes
I am yours. If you feed me garbage,
I will sing a song of garbage.
This is a hymn.
Selected Poems 1965-1975 (1976)
In restaurants we argue
over which of us will pay for your funeral though the real question is
whether or not I will make you immortal.
Selected Poems 1965-1975 (1976)
He doesn't know which is worse, a past he can't regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo.
Oryx and Crake (2003)
“Gender roles suck," says Swift Fox. Then you should stop playing them, thinks Toby.
MaddAddam (2013)
“we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.”
The Year of the Flood (2009)
The fact is there are no stories I can tell my friends that will make them feel better. History cannot be erased, although we can soothe ourselves by speculating about it.
Selected Poems 1976-1986 (1987)
“Life is warped. I'm just in sync.”
MaddAddam (2013)
“It's better to hope than mope!”
The Year of the Flood (2009)
I became a poet at the age of sixteen. I did not intend to do it. It was not my fault.
On Writing Poetry (1995)
There were a lot of utopias in the nineteenth century, wonderful societies that we might possibly construct. Those went pretty much out of fashion after World War I.
The Progressive interview (2010)
I was scuttling along in my usual furtive way, suspecting no ill, when a large invisible thumb descended from the sky and pressed down on the top of my head. A poem formed.
On Writing Poetry (1995)
time is not a thing that passes, said Pilar: it’s a sea on which you float.
The Year of the Flood (2009)
I am the horizon
you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso I am also what surrounds you:
my brain
scattered with your
tincans, bones, empty shells,
the litter of your invasions. I am the space you desecrate
as you pass through.
Selected Poems 1965-1975 (1976)
Why is war so much like a practical joke? she thinks. Hiding behind bushes, leaping out, with not much difference between Boo! and Bang! except the blood.
MaddAddam (2013)
There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.
MaddAddam (2013)
A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately.
On Writing Poetry (1995)
You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, is what he says. We thought we could do better.
Better? I say, in a small voice. How can he think this is better?
Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
He was not a monster, to her. Probably he had some endearing trait: he whistled, off key, in the shower, he had a yen for truffles, he called his dog Liebchen and made it sit up for little pieces of raw steak. How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
Everyone said he was a fool.
Everyone said she was a clever woman.
They used the word ensnare.
Selected Poems 1976-1986 (1987)
The fabric of democracy is always fragile everywhere because it depends on the will of citizens to protect it, and when they become scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend it, it can go very quickly.
The Progressive interview (2010)