Margaret Atwood,2000
A novel within a novel. The main storyline is set in Ontario, Canada, and involves Iris narrating by a series of flashbacks, how three deaths early on in the story (Laura, her sister, Richard, her politically ambitious wealthy husband, and her grand-daughter Sabrina) came to be. The other storyline involves an affair between an unidentified couple, one of which wrote a novel entitled the Blind Assassin.
"Why do we always assume at such moments that everyone is staring at us. Usually nobody is."
"I dont need that fluff on my coffee.Looks like shaving cream. One swallow and you're foaming at the mouth."
"But thoughtless ingratitude is the armour of the young; without it, how would they ever get through life? The old wish the young well, but they wish them ill also; they would like to eat them up, and absorb their vitality, and remain immortal themselves. Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past-the past of others, loaded onto their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace."
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
"Where was the threshold, between the inner world and the outer one? We each move unthinkingly through this gateway everyday, we use the passwords of grammar-I say, you say, he and she say it, on the other hand, does not say-paying for the privelege of sanity with common coin, with meanings we've agreed on."
"All the speech-making can bloat a man up. I've watched the process, many times now. It's those kind of words, the kind they use in speeches. They have a fermenting effect on the brain. You can see it on television, during the political broadcasts-the words coming out of their mouths like bubbles of gas."
No comments:
Post a Comment