Margaret Quotes

“Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.”
― Margaret Chittenden

“I have so much hate that it has turned into love.”
― Margaret Cho, I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight

“Red Fox

The red fox crosses the ice
intent on none of my business.
It's winter and slim pickings.

I stand in the bushy cemetery,
pretending to watch birds,
but really watching the fox
who could care less.
She pauses on the sheer glare
of the pond. She knows I'm there,
sniffs me in the wind at her shoulder.
If I had a gun or dog
or a raw heart, she'd smell it.
She didn't get this smart for nothing.

She's a lean vixen: I can see
the ribs, the sly
trickster's eyes, filled with longing
and desperation, the skinny
feet, adept at lies.

Why encourage the notion
of virtuous poverty?

It's only an excuse
for zero charity.
Hunger corrupts, and absolute hunger
corrupts absolutely,
or almost. Of course there are mothers,
squeezing their breasts
dry, pawning their bodies,
shedding teeth for their children,
or that's our fond belief.
But remember - Hansel
and Gretel were dumped in the forest
because their parents were starving.
Sauve qui peut. To survive
we'd all turn thief

and rascal, or so says the fox,
with her coat of an elegant scoundrel,
her white knife of a smile,
who knows just where she's going:

to steal something
that doesn't belong to her -
some chicken, or one more chance,
or other life.”
― Margaret Atwood, Morning In The Burned House: Poems

“How will a person know, Selina, when the soul that has the affinity with hers is near it?" She answered, "She will know. Does she look for air, before she breathes it? This love will be guided to her; and when it comes, she will know. And she will do anything to keep that love about her, then. Because to lose it will be like a death to her.”
― Sarah Waters, Affinity

“Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing

The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I've a choice
of how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
or war, it's all in the timing.
I sell men back their worst suspicions:
that everything's for sale,
and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
are still connected.
Such hatred leaps in them,
my beery worshipers! That, or a bleary
hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads
and upturned eyes, imploring
but ready to snap at my ankles,
I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge
to step on ants. I keep the beat,
and dance for them because
they can't. The music smells like foxes,
crisp as heated metal
searing the nostrils
or humid as August, hazy and languorous
as a looted city the day after,
when all the rape's been done
already, and the killing,
and the survivors wander around
looking for garbage
to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.

Speaking of which, it's the smiling
tires me out the most.
This, and the pretense
that I can't hear them.
And I can't, because I'm after all
a foreigner to them.
The speech here is all warty gutturals,
obvious as a slam of ham,
but I come from the province of the gods
where meaning are lilting and oblique.
I don't let on to everyone,
but lean close, and I'll whisper:
My mothers was raped by a holy swan.
You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.
That's what we tell all the husbands.
There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here
but you would understand.
The rest of them would like to watch me
and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
as in a clock factory or abattoir.
Crush out the mystery.
Wall me up alive
in my own body.
They'd like to see through me,
but nothing is more opaque
than absolute transparency.
Look - my feet don't hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I'm not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you'll burn.”
― Margaret Atwood, Morning In The Burned House: Poems

“But, surely, if the mind is too long directed to one object only, it will get stiff and rigid, and unable to take in many interests.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“How many times will she watch someone leave this place and never look back, while she is left here like a ghost to haunt it?”
― Allison Saft, A Far Wilder Magic

“I only mean, Bessy, there's good and bad in everything in this world; and as you felt the bad up here, I thought it was but fair you should know the bad down there.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“Girl Without Hands

Walking through the ruins
on your way to work
that do not look like ruins
with the sunlight pouring over
the seen world
like hail or melted
silver, that bright
and magnificent, each leaf
and stone quickened and specific in it,
and you can't hold it,
you can't hold any of it. Distance surrounds you,
marked out by the ends of your arms
when they are stretched to their fullest.
You can go no farther than this,
you think, walking forward,
pushing the distance in front of you
like a metal cart on wheels
with its barriers and horizontals.
Appearance melts away from you,
the offices and pyramids
on the horizon shimmer and cease.
No one can enter that circle
you have made, that clean circle
of dead space you have made
and stay inside,
mourning because it is clean.

Then there's the girl, in the white dress,
meaning purity, or the failure
to be any colour. She has no hands, it's true.
The scream that happened to the air
when they were taken off
surrounds her now like an aureole
of hot sand, of no sound.
Everything has bled out of her.

Only a girl like this
can know what's happened to you.
If she were here she would
reach out her arms towards
you now, and touch you
with her absent hands
and you would feel nothing, but you would be
touched all the same.”
― Margaret Atwood, Morning In The Burned House: Poems

“The vase was placed upon my desk, and there were orange-blossoms in it—orange-blossoms, in an English winter!”
― Sarah Waters, Affinity

“Every poor lady that came to me, that touched my hand, that drew a small part of my spirit from me to her—they were only shadows. Aurora, they were shadows of you! I was only seeking you out, as you were seeking me. You were seeking me, your own affinity. And if you let them keep me from you now, I think we shall die!”
― Sarah Waters, Affinity

“They walked over to it and Brad bent down gingerly: "It's a leg all right," he said.”
― Shirley Jackson

“God is just, and our lots are well portioned out by Him, although none but He knows the bitterness of our souls.

Margaret to Bessy re: trials & burdens we all carry”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“Simon, mark well my words! Wives are the devil ­ and I know!'
`In truth,' Alan sighed, `I am the only wise one amongst us all.'
`Art a silly lad!' Fulk rumbled, and cast him an affectionate
though fiery glance.
`Alan speaks sooth for once,' Simon said, and placed his finger on Margaret's indignant lips. He had her in his arms again, and like a needle to the magnet, Jeanne had drawn near to her Geoffrey. `For Alan throughout hath known that needs must I fall, and at Margot's feet.'
`Ah, and he knew that I loved thee, even before I knew it myself,' Margaret cried. `Methinks he hath worked very quietly to bring about our happiness. And yet he will not seek his own.'
`I observe thy folly,' he said, `and know mine own wisdom. That is happiness.'
Jeanne looked at Geoffrey, and a smile passed between them, of boundless conceit. Margaret stole her hand into Simon's, smiling also. Not one of them answered Alan, and he laughed,
leaning on his father's shoulder, and surveying his two friends with soft, satisfied eyes.
`Are my sage words beneath contempt?' he asked.
`Ay,' Simon answered simply, and looked down into Margaret's face for a long moment. A deep breath he drew, and glanced again at Alan. `Beneath contempt,' said Simon the Coldheart.”
― Georgette Heyer, Simon the Coldheart

“He never looked at her, and yet, the careful avoidance of his eyes betokened that in some way he knew exactly where, if they fell by chance, they would rest on her.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“Gossiping always leads to spoiled milk.'

- Margaret”
― Marissa Meyer, Heartless

“ "Who taught you to raise the dead?"
"N-no one. I—I've never even met another necromancer before you." Not exactly true. I'd briefly met the ghost of one, but he hadn't been much help.
"Did the Edison Group give you books? Manuals?"
"J-Just a history book that I—I skimmed through a bit. Th-there wasn't anything on rituals."
A moment of silence as she studied me through the mirror. "You were trying to make a point, weren't you, Chloe?"
"Wh-what?"
"I said you couldn't raise the dead; you proved you could. You visualized returning a soul—"
"No!" my stutter fell away. "Returning a ghost to a rotting corpse to make a point? I'd never do that. I was doing exactly what you asked—trying to pull that spirit through. I was summoning. But if I do that with dead bodies around, I can raise the dead. That's what I tried to tell you."
She drove for a minute, the silence heavy. Then her gaze rose to the mirror again, meeting mine.
"You're telling me you can raise the dead simply by summoning?"
"Yes."
"My God," she whispered, staring at me. "What have they done?"
Hearing her words and seeing her expression, I knew Derek had been right last night. I'd just done something worse than raising the dead—I'd confirmed her worst fears about us.”
― Kelley Armstrong, The Reckoning