Маргарет Этвуд цитаты

страница 10

„Мы все еще думаем о сильном мужчине, как о прирождённом лидере и о сильной женщине, как об аномалии.“

„Мужчина может написать роман без единого женского персонажа, если не считать квартирной хозяйки или лошади; но женский роман без мужчин невозможен.“

„Ответы, которые дают тебе книги, зависят от вопросов, которые ты задаёшь.“

„Людям почему—то нравится сваливать мусор в такие места, где еще сохранилась природа…“

„Из всех прочитанных мною книг наибольшее влияние на меня оказали «Сказки братьев Гримм».“

„Ручной труд способствовал исцелению духа. Он вычистил комнаты, вымел всю паутину, забрал со склада, где хранил вещи, свои немногочисленные пожитки и перевез их в новый дом.“

„….Меня не занимает шкатулка с красивым рисунком на крышке, - отвечает Дюпон. - Для меня важна лишь музыка. Её извлекает физический предмет, но музыка не является самим предметом. Как сказано в Писании: "Дух дышит где хочет".“

„Чаще всего она будто хотела защитить его от собственного образа, от прошлой себя, чтобы он видел в ней только лучшее. Ей нравилось сиять.“

„Развод, как ампутация: ты остаёшься в живых, но тебя стало меньше.“

„Соединённые Штаты страдают национальной мегаломанией, Канада — шизофреническим раздвоением личности.“

„Каждый миф есть одна из версий правды.“

„Издатели думают лишь о том, чтобы заработать деньги, и если вы пишете хорошо, им наплевать, кто вы — мужчина, женщина, или слон.“

„Я была хорошей машинисткой. В моем колледже умение печатать на машинке считалось вторичным половым признаком, вроде женской груди.“

„Я не думаю, что поэзия выражает чувства. Она пробуждает чувства в читателе, а это совсем другое дело. Как кто-то сказал: «Хочешь выразить свои чувства — плачь».“

„Мы были людьми, о которых не писали в газетах. Мы жили в пробелах и на полях листа. Это давало нам больше свободы. Мы жили в промежутках между историями.“

„Интересоваться жизнью писателя, потому что вам нравиться его книга — все равно что интересоваться жизнью уток, потому что вам нравится фуа-гра.“

“I want, I don’t want.
How can one live with such a heart?”

“How old do you have to get before wisdom descends like a plastic bag over your head and you learn to keep your big mouth shut? Maybe never. Maybe you get more frivolous with age.”

“Even an obvious fabrication is some comfort when you have few others.”

“Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy?”

“How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it.”

“Sex is like a drink, it's bad to start brooding about it too early in the day.”

“Nor did I make any distinctions between great literature and any other kind. I just liked reading.”

“People dressed in a certain kind of clothing are never wrong. Also they never fart.”

“It's his word against the Commander's, unless he wants to head a posse. Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words.”

“I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born”

“it's doors I'm afraid of because I can't see through them, its the door opening by itself in the wind I'm afraid of.”

“If you don't like it, change it, we said, to each other and to ourselves. And so we would change for the man, for another one. Change, we were sure, was for the better always. We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.”

“When power is scarce, a little of it is tempting.”

“I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.”

“What is the real breath of a man — the breathing out or the breathing in?”

“To take that risk, to offer life and remain alive, open yourself like this and become whole.”

“But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell burst, the plummet of the car from a bridge.”

“I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.”

“The proper study of Mankind is Everything.”

“Life is warped. I'm just in sync.”

“Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.”

“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.”

“He was not condemned to death, freedom awaited
him. What was the temptation, the one that worked?
Perhaps he wanted to live with a woman whose life
he had saved, who had seen down into the earth but
had nevertheless followed him back up to life. It was
his only chance to be a hero, to one person at least,
for if he became the hangman the others would
despise him. He was in prison for wounding another
man, on one finger of the right hand, with a sword.
This too is history.”

“I can tell you that once upon a time when I was doing public events people would ask me, "What do you think about the arts?, What do you think of the role of women?, What do you think of men?, What do you think of all of these things?", and now they ask one thing, and that one thing is this, "Is there hope?"”

“I soon had a few thousand people I didn’t know sending me messages like “OMG! Is it really you?” “I love it when old ladies blog,” one early follower remarked. … and they really shone when, during the Olympics, I said that "Own the podium" was too brash to be Canadian, and suggested "A podium might be nice." Their own variations poured onto a feed tagged #cpodium: "A podium! For me?" "Rent the podium, see if we like it." "Mind if I squeeze by you to get onto that podium?"”

“In general I might agree with you:
women should not contemplate war,
should not weigh tactics impartially,
or evade the word enemy,
or view both sides and denounce nothing.
Women should march for peace,
or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery,
spit themselves on bayonets
to protect their babies,
whose skulls will be split anyway,
or, having been raped repeatedly,
hang themselves with their own hair.
These are the functions that inspire general comfort.
That, and the knitting of socks for the troops
and a sort of moral cheerleading.
Also: mourning the dead.
Sons, lovers, and so forth.
All the killed children.”

“Everyone said he was a fool.
Everyone said she was a clever woman.
They used the word ensnare.”

“He's just a contact of hers, which is not the same as a friend. While she was in the hospital she decided that most of her friends were really just contacts.”

“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.”