--- title: "4 Burned Quotes By Margaret Atwood" description: "4 Burned quotes by Margaret Atwood. Plus more from Margaret Atwood and more Burned sayings from other authors." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2a3/margaret-atwood-40_atwood_helen-of-troy-does-counter-dancing-the-w_248920.jpg" --- > [“Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing The world is full of women who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself if…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/helen-of-troy-does-counter-dancing-the-world-is-full-of-women-who-d/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2a3/margaret-atwood-40_atwood_helen-of-troy-does-counter-dancing-the-w_248920.jpg) > [“Girl Without Hands Walking through the ruins on your way to work that do not look like ruins with the sunlight pouring…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/girl-without-hands-walking-through-the-ruins-on-your-way-to-work-that/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/7d4/margaret-atwood-40_atwood_girl-without-hands-walking-through-the-r_738788.jpg) > [“Red Fox The red fox crosses the ice intent on none of my business. It's winter and slim pickings. I stand in…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/red-fox-the-red-fox-crosses-the-ice-intent-on-none-of-my-business-it/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/709/margaret-atwood-40_atwood_red-fox-the-red-fox-crosses-the-ice-inte_1209151.jpg) > [“The Loneliness of the Military Historian Confess: it's my profession that alarms you. This is why few people ask me to dinner,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/the-loneliness-of-the-military-historian-confess-it-s-my-profession/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d38/margaret-atwood-40_burned_the-loneliness-of-the-military-historian_1583625.jpg) ## Other authors on Burned ## More by Margaret Atwood > [“I'm fine," said Pilar, "for the moment. And the moment is the only time we can be fine in.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/i-m-fine-said-pilar-for-the-moment-and-the-moment-is-the-only-time-we/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) > [And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/and-yet-it-disturbs-me-to-learn-i-have-hurt-someone-unintentionally-i/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) > [“Mary: Some call this "Eve's curse," but I think that is stupid because the real curse of Eve was having to put up with…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/mary-some-call-this-eve-s-curse-but-i-think-that-is-stupid-because/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) > [“The birds were singing around me, but I reflected that the very birds were strangers to me, for I did not even know their…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/the-birds-were-singing-around-me-but-i-reflected-that-the-very-birds/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) > [“Strange how we decorate pain. These ribbons, for instance, and the small hard teardrops of blood. Who are they for? Do we think the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/strange-how-we-decorate-pain-these-ribbons-for-instance-and-the-small/) [margaret atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) > [I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/i-wanted-to-forget-the-past-but-it-refused-to-forget-me-it-waited-for/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) > [“Back at home they drew the curtains and read, with disapproval, with relish, with avidity and glee - even the ones who'd never thought…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/back-at-home-they-drew-the-curtains-and-read-with-disapproval-with/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) > [“It's my fault. I am forgetting too much.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/it-s-my-fault-i-am-forgetting-too-much/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) > [All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/all-fiction-is-about-people-unless-it-s-about-rabbits-pretending-to/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) > [“Simon walks back to the house alone. The night is clear and warm, with a moon, almost full, enclosed in a nimbus of mist;…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/simon-walks-back-to-the-house-alone-the-night-is-clear-and-warm-with/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) > [“There is indeed something delightful about being able to combine obedience and disobedience in the same act.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/there-is-indeed-something-delightful-about-being-able-to-combine/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) > [“Every time the women appear, Snowman is astonished all over again. They're every known colour from the deepest black to whitest white, they're various…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/every-time-the-women-appear-snowman-is-astonished-all-over-again-they/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) > [Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/once-you-publish-a-book-it-is-out-of-your-control-you-cannot-dictate/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) > [“The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/the-more-difficult-it-was-to-love-the-particular-man-beside-us-the/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) > [“She knows she's deceiving herself about that, but she prefers to deceive herself. She desperately needs to believe such pure joy is still possible.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/she-knows-she-s-deceiving-herself-about-that-but-she-prefers-to/) [Margaret Atwood](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/margaret-atwood/) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "ItemList", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/burned/margaret-atwood/#itemlist", "name": "4 Burned Quotes By Margaret Atwood", "numberOfItems": 4, "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“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.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Margaret Atwood" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/helen-of-troy-does-counter-dancing-the-world-is-full-of-women-who-d/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2a3/margaret-atwood-40_atwood_helen-of-troy-does-counter-dancing-the-w_248920.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2a3/margaret-atwood-40_atwood_helen-of-troy-does-counter-dancing-the-w_248920.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2a3/margaret-atwood-40_atwood_helen-of-troy-does-counter-dancing-the-w_248920.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing The world is full of women who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself if…” — Margaret Atwood", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“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.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Margaret Atwood" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/girl-without-hands-walking-through-the-ruins-on-your-way-to-work-that/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/7d4/margaret-atwood-40_atwood_girl-without-hands-walking-through-the-r_738788.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/7d4/margaret-atwood-40_atwood_girl-without-hands-walking-through-the-r_738788.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/7d4/margaret-atwood-40_atwood_girl-without-hands-walking-through-the-r_738788.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Girl Without Hands Walking through the ruins on your way to work that do not look like ruins with the…” — Margaret Atwood", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“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.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Margaret Atwood" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/red-fox-the-red-fox-crosses-the-ice-intent-on-none-of-my-business-it/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/709/margaret-atwood-40_atwood_red-fox-the-red-fox-crosses-the-ice-inte_1209151.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/709/margaret-atwood-40_atwood_red-fox-the-red-fox-crosses-the-ice-inte_1209151.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/709/margaret-atwood-40_atwood_red-fox-the-red-fox-crosses-the-ice-inte_1209151.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Red Fox The red fox crosses the ice intent on none of my business. It's winter and slim pickings. I stand in…” — Margaret Atwood", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“The Loneliness of the Military Historian Confess: it's my profession that alarms you. This is why few people ask me to dinner, though Lord knows I don't go out of my way to be scary. I wear dresses of sensible cut and unalarming shades of beige, I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser's: no prophetess mane of mine, complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters. If I roll my eyes and mutter, if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene, I do it in private and nobody sees but the bathroom mirror. In general I might agree with you: women should not contemplate war, should not weigh tactics impartially, or evade the word enemy , or view both sides and denounce nothing. Women should march for peace, or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery, spit themselves on bayonets to protect their babies, whose skulls will be split anyway, or,having been raped repeatedly, hang themselves with their own hair. There are the functions that inspire general comfort. That, and the knitting of socks for the troops and a sort of moral cheerleading. Also: mourning the dead. Sons,lovers and so forth. All the killed children. Instead of this, I tell what I hope will pass as truth. A blunt thing, not lovely. The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner, though I am good at what I do. My trade is courage and atrocities. I look at them and do not condemn. I write things down the way they happened, as near as can be remembered. I don't ask why , because it is mostly the same. Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win. In my dreams there is glamour. The Vikings leave their fields each year for a few months of killing and plunder, much as the boys go hunting. In real life they were farmers. The come back loaded with splendour. The Arabs ride against Crusaders with scimitars that could sever silk in the air. A swift cut to the horse's neck and a hunk of armour crashes down like a tower. Fire against metal. A poet might say: romance against banality. When awake, I know better. Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters, or none that could be finally buried. Finish one off, and circumstances and the radio create another. Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently to God all night and meant it, and been slaughtered anyway. Brutality wins frequently, and large outcomes have turned on the invention of a mechanical device, viz. radar. True, valour sometimes counts for something, as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right - though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition, is decided by the winner. Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades and burst like paper bags of guts to save their comrades. I can admire that. But rats and cholera have won many wars. Those, and potatoes, or the absence of them. It's no use pinning all those medals across the chests of the dead. Impressive, but I know too much. Grand exploits merely depress me. In the interests of research I have walked on many battlefields that once were liquid with pulped men's bodies and spangled with exploded shells and splayed bone. All of them have been green again by the time I got there. Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day. Sad marble angels brood like hens over the grassy nests where nothing hatches. (The angels could just as well be described as vulgar or pitiless , depending on camera angle.) The word glory figures a lot on gateways. Of course I pick a flower or two from each, and press it in the hotel Bible for a souvenir. I'm just as human as you. But it's no use asking me for a final statement. As I say, I deal in tactics. Also statistics: for every year of peace there have been four hundred years of war.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Margaret Atwood" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/margaret-atwood/the-loneliness-of-the-military-historian-confess-it-s-my-profession/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d38/margaret-atwood-40_burned_the-loneliness-of-the-military-historian_1583625.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d38/margaret-atwood-40_burned_the-loneliness-of-the-military-historian_1583625.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d38/margaret-atwood-40_burned_the-loneliness-of-the-military-historian_1583625.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“The Loneliness of the Military Historian Confess: it's my profession that alarms you. 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