Маргарет Этвуд цитаты

страница 6

„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.“

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”

“You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labeled bones.”

“Today on the way home, it snows. Big, soft caressing flakes fall onto our skin like cold moths; the air fills with feathers.”

“How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all.”

“I see that there will be no end to imperfection, or to doing things the wrong way. Even if you grow up, no matter how hard you scrub, whatever you do, there will always be some other stain or spot on your face or stupid act, somebody frowning.”

“Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.”

“So this was the rest of his life. It felt like a party to which he'd been invited, but at an address he couldn't actually locate. Someone must be having fun at it, this life of his; only, right at the moment, it wasn't him.”

“Now that I am dead, I know everything.”

“Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.”

“I did not know how to paint or even what to paint, but I knew I had to begin.”

“The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. The difference betweenand. Lay is always passive.”

“Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.”

“For if the world treats you well, Sir, you come to believe you are deserving of it.”

“No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do too badly by one another, we did as well as most.”

“Genius is an infinite capacity for causing pain.”

“Canadians are fond of a good disaster, especially if it has ice, water, or snow in it. You thought the national flag was about a leaf, didn't you? Look harder. It's where someone got axed in the snow.”

“But my dreaming self refuses to be consoled. It continues to wander, aimless, homeless, alone. It cannot be convinced of its safety by any evidence drawn from my waking life.”

“I stand on the corner, pretending I am a tree.”

“Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings… but there’s something dead about it, something deserted.”

“There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.”

“Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly. Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God.”

“Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself:. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor.”

“EXTINCTATHON, Monitored by MaddAddam. Adam named the living animals, MaddAddam names the dead ones. Do you want to play?”

“In my dreams of this city I am always lost.”

“he might die for her, but living for her would be quite different.”

“Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered.”

“You aren't sick & unhappy
only alive & stuck with it.”

“The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner.”

“At moments like this I envy those who have found a safe haven in which to bestow their hearts; or perhaps I envy them for having a heart to bestow. I often feel that I myself am without one, and possess in its stead merely a heart shaped stone.”