Margaret Atwood

It's simple,' Kat told them. 'You bombard them with images of what they ought to be, and you make them feel grotty for being the way they are. You're working with the gap between reality and perception. That's why you have to hit them with something new, something they've never seen before, something they aren't. Nothing sells like anxiety.

And if I talk to him, I'll say something wrong, give something away. I can feel it coming, a betrayal of myself.

He would have died soon, but more painfully. Anyway, it was Urban Bloodshed Limitation. First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled.

Surviving Is the only warWe can afford

Sauve qui peut. To survivewe__ all turn thiefand rascal, or so says the fox,with her coat of an elegant scoundrel,her white knife of a smile,who knows just where she__ going:to steal somethingthat doesn__ belong to her -some chicken, or one more chance,or other life.

Thinking he knows can be a trap. An ex-professor once told him he had a diamond-hard intellect and he__ been flattered at the time. Now he considers the nature of diamonds. Although sharp and glittering and useful for cutting glass, they shine with reflected light only. They__e no use at all in the dark

« Stan wants to see them work the facial features, especially the smiles. He has a professional interest, from his job at Dimple. The Empathy Model he__ worked on could smile, but it was the same smile every time. Though what else did you need for checking out groceries? Put two eyes on anything and basically it looks like a face. »

Setting fire to the roofs, getting away with the loot, suiting herself. She studied modern philosophy, read Sartre on the side, smoked Gitanes, and cultivated a look of bored contempt. But inwardly, she was seething with unfocused excitement, and looking for someone to worship.

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did it, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult. It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics at the time. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe, the entire government gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

She writes like an angel, it says of Laura on the back of one of the editions of The Blind Assassin. An American edition, as I recall, with gold scrollwork on the cover: they set a lot of store by angels in those parts. In point of fact angels don't write much. They record sins and the names of the dammed and the saved, or they appear as disembodied hands and scribble warnings on walls. Or they deliver messages, few of which are good news: God be with you is not an unmixed blessing.

Every Canadian has a complicated relationship with the United States, whereas Americans think of Canada as the place where the weather comes from.

I'm not going to have a husband anyway," said Laura. "I'm going to live by myself in the garage.

Madness is only an amplification of what you already are.

And the vampires. You used to know where you stood with them _ smelly, evil, undead _ but now there are virtuous vampires and disreputable vampires, and sexy vampires and glittery vampires, and none of the old rules about them are true any more. Once you could depend on garlic, and on the rising sun, and on crucifixes. You could get rid of the vampires once and for all. But not any more.

...we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.

I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story, because after all I want you to hear it_.By telling you anything at all I__ at least believing in you_.Because I__ telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are.

A writer's age at the time of a work's composition is never irrelevant.