Quotes about Desire
She has never been in the presence, before, of two people who are in love with each other. She feels like a stray child, ragged and cold, with her nose pressed to a lighted window. A toy-store window, a bakery window, with fancy cakes and decorated cookies. Poverty prevents her entrance. These things are for other people; nothing for her.
- Margaret Atwood
Death makes me hungry. Maybe it's because I've been emptied; or maybe it's the body's way of seeing to it that I remain alive, continue to repeat its bedrock prayer: I am, I am. I am, still.
- Margaret Atwood
I did not give him a straight answer, because saying what you really want out loud brings bad luck, and then the good thing will never happen. It might not happen anyway, but just to make sure, you should be careful about saying what you want or even wanting anything, as you may be punished for it.
- Margaret Atwood
But also I'm hungry. This is monstrous, but nevertheless it's true. Death makes me hungry. Maybe it's because I've been emptied; or maybe it's the body's way of seeing to it that I remain alive, continue to repeat its bedrock prayer: I am, I am. I am, still. I want to go to bed, make love, right now. I think of the word relish. I could eat a horse.
- Margaret Atwood
His head is a little below mine, so that when he looks up at me it's at a juvenile angle. It must amuse him, this fake subservience. (...) The problem wasn't only the women, he says. The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them any more. (...) That was part of it, the sex was too easy. Anyone could just buy it. There was nothing to work for, nothing to fight for. (...)
- Margaret Atwood
As Saint Paul says, marry or burn.
- Margaret Atwood
Zenia has stolen something from him, the one thing he always kept safe before, from all women, even from Roz. Call it his soul. She slipped it out of his breast pocket when he wasn't looking, easy as rolling a drunk, and looked at it, and bit it to see if it was genuine, and sneered at it for being so small after all, and then tossed it away, because she's the kind of woman who wants what she doesn't have and gets what she wants and then despises what she gets. What
- Margaret Atwood
Sex and violence, he thinks now. A lot of the songs were about that. We didn't even notice. We thought it was art.
- Margaret Atwood
call attention of course to the breasts. Some of these women have been within inches of getting Ed to put his head down on their chests, right there in Sally's living room. Watching all this out of the corners of her eyes while serving the liqueurs, Sally feels the Aztec rise within her. Trouble with your heart? Get it removed, she thinks. Then you'll have no more problems.
- Margaret Atwood
I admit I relish it, this lick of dissipation.
- Margaret Atwood
she'd have been gnawing her way through his bedroom walls to sink her avid fingers into his youthful flesh.
- Margaret Atwood
In Tin's already jaded view, experiences were what you got when you couldn't get what you wanted, but Jorrie had always been more optimistic than him.
- Margaret Atwood