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Life Before Man QUOTES

Life Before Man QUOTES

1 " I wish I didn't have to think about you. You wanted to impress me; well, I'm not impressed, I'm disgusted...You wanted to make damn good and sure I'd never be able to turn over in bed again without feeling that body beside me, not there but tangible, like a leg that's been cut off. Gone but the place still hurts. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

2 " They meet in church basements and offer bandages to those wounded by the shrapnel of exploding families. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

3 " China does not exist. Nevertheless, she longs to be there. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

4 " All she wants is a miracle, because anything else is hopeless. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

5 " William sits opposite her, drinking water from a Murray’s glass with a trace of lipstick on the rim. His fingers hold the glass, his other hand lies on the table, his neck comes out of his shirt collar, which is light green, and on top of that is his head. His eyes are blue and he has two of them. This is the sum total of William in the present tense. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

6 " Bugün dünyada ve dünya atmosferinde var olan bütün moleküler maddeler, dünya kurulduğunda da vardı; dünyanın yaradılışı ister daha büyük bir kütlenin patlaması, ister gazlı bir yıkıntının yoğunlaşması sonucunda gerçekleşmiş olsun. Bu moleküler maddeler yalnızca birleştiler, parçalanıp dağıldılar, sonra yeniden birleştiler. Bu arada birkaç molekül ve atom uzaya kaçtıysa da, var olanlara hiçbir şey eklenmedi. Lesje bu gerçeği düşünerek yatışıyor. Kendisi de yalnızca bir canlı örneği, o kadar; değişmez bir nesne değil. Değişmez bir nesne diye bir şey yoktur zaten. Bir gün vakti gelince, Lesje da çözülüp ayrışacak. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

7 " Sanmam ki ağaç kadar güzel bir şiir olsun. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

8 " Nilüfer yaprağı üzerindeki su perisi bakışı "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

9 " Su abuela ucraniana quería que fuese azafata de líneas aéreas. Su abuela judía, que se hiciese abogada y se casara con otro abogado, a ser posible. Su padre quería que diera lo mejor de sí. Su madre, que fuese feliz "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

10 " All she wants is for both of them to be different. Not very different, a little would do it. Same molecules, different arrangement. All she wants is a miracle, because anything else is hopeless. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

11 " But what if she discovers the truth? What he suspects is the truth. That he’s patchwork, a tin man, his heart stuffed with sawdust. He thinks of her waiting for him, somewhere else, an island, subtropical, not muggy, her long hair waving in the sea breeze, a red hibiscus tucked behind one ear. If he’s lucky she’ll wait till that happens, till he can get there to be with her. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

12 " Perhaps, Lesje thinks, she should join a discussion group. She’s heard about such groups, she reads about them in the family sections of the papers Nate brings home every night. They meet in church basements and offer bandages to those wounded by the shrapnel of exploding families. Maybe she should go and drink cups of tea with such a group and eat cookies and bitch about Elizabeth. But she knows she can’t. She’s hopeless in groups, she’d be afraid of what she might say. In any gathering of the disabled she will always be the least disabled, or pretend to be. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

13 " Now she wants these voices back; even the squabbling, even the rage. She wants to dance with flowers on her head, she wants to be endorsed, sanctified, she doesn’t care who by. She wants a mother’s blessing. Though she can’t imagine her own mother doing such a thing. This is the problem. She knows by now that people do not behave the way she wishes them to. So what should she do, change wishes? "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

14 " As for Nate, it’s simple. All she wants is for both of them to be different. Not very different, a little would do it. Same molecules, different arrangement. All she wants is a miracle, because anything else is hopeless. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

15 " This is what Elizabeth cannot forgive. She can’t forgive her own treachery. Auntie Muriel must not be allowed to get away with it. She must, for Elizabeth’s benefit, visibly suffer. At last. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

16 " Nevertheless he thinks: Soon they will be women, and that recognition runs through him like a needle. They will demand brassieres and then reject them, blaming both needs on him. They will criticize his clothes, his job, his turn of phrase. They’ll leave home to live with surly, scrofulous young men; or they’ll marry dentists and go in for white rugs and hanging sculptures made of wool. Either way they will judge him. Motherless, childless, he sits at the kitchen table, the solitary wanderer, under the cold red stars. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

17 " From everything you’ve told me,” Lesje said, “she hated that aunt.” Nate said that although this was true, the aunt had been important in Elizabeth’s life. In his opinion the importance of something to someone had nothing to do with its positive qualities but only with its impact, its force, and the aunt had been a force. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

18 " It’s long been her theoretical opinion that Man is a danger to the universe, a mischievous ape, spiteful, destructive, malevolent. But only theoretical. Really she believed that if people could see how they were acting they would act some other way. Now she knows this isn’t true. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

19 " Nate hasn’t yet frightened her by asking her to tell him about herself, though he’s been talking since they sat down. She ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. She listens, eating in small bites, concealing her teeth. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man

20 " Lesje herself doesn’t know how she would vote. She thinks she would probably move, instead. Nationalism of any kind makes her uneasy. In her parents’ house it was a forbidden subject. "

― Margaret Atwood , Life Before Man