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The Blind Assassin: A Novel

A 1960s Austrian housewife is forced to re-examine her past when pages from old diaries begin to arrive mysteriously in the letter box at her family home. Each day after the windows are clean and the baking is done, she forces herself to read and burn the

(14 total)

Characters

Margaret Atwood (14)

“If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyon…”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: premonition, Foresight, Love

“Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it’s much the same.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Mind, Thoughts, Intense feelings, emotions

“It's Paradise, but we can't get out of it. And anything you can't get out of is Hell.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Paradise, Hell, Torture, Being Stuck, Love

“When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things get in that ought to be shut out. The locks lose their powers. The guards go to sleep. The passwords fail.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Pain, Sadness, self

“I was sand, I was snow—written on, rewritten, smoothed over.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Change, Identity, Self-Concept

“'Should' is a futile word. It's about what didn't happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It belongs in another dimension of space.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Regret, Perception, Mistakes, Alternate Universes

“Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Beginnings, Change, Endings

“The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Secrets, Keeping Secrets

“Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blur the edges; then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it's noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands c…”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Truth, Farewells, Goodbyes, Saying Goodbye, Returning

“When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You're your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too—leave them behind. You don't yet know about the habit they have, of coming back.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Disposable, Time, Childhood, Growing Up, Change

“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Truth, Writing, Creativity

“If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyon…”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Future, Clarity, Depression, Understanding, Big Picture

“When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You're your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too—leave them behind. You don't yet know about the habit they have, of coming back.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Youth, Growing Up, Time

“All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel…. Think about it. There’s escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them i…”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Wolf, Independence, Wild, Literature