Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House

"Girl Without Hands Walking through the ruinson your way to workthat do not look like ruinswith the sunlight pouring overthe seen worldlike hail or meltedsilver, that brightand magnificent, each leafand 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 armswhen they are stretched to their fullest. You can go no farther than this,you think, walking forward,pushing the distance in front of youlike a metal cart on wheelswith its barriers and horizontals. Appearance melts away from you,the offices and pyramidson the horizon shimmer and cease. No one can enter that circleyou have made, that clean circleof dead space you have madeand stay inside,mourning because it is clean. Then there's the girl, in the white dress,meaning purity, or the failureto be any colour. She has no hands, it's true. The scream that happened to the airwhen they were taken offsurrounds her now like an aureoleof hot sand, of no sound. Everything has bled out of her. Only a girl like thiscan know what's happened to you. If she were here she wouldreach out her arms towardsyou now, and touch youwith her absent handsand you would feel nothing, but you would betouched all the same."

"Sauve qui peut. To survivewe’d all turn thiefand 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 somethingthat doesn’t belong to her -some chicken, or one more chance,or other life."

"She’s a lean vixen: I can seethe ribs, the slytrickster’s eyes, filled with longing and desperation, the skinnyfeet, adept at lies. Why encourage the notionof virtuous poverty?It’s only an excusefor zero charity. Hunger corrupts, and absolute hungercorrupts absolutely,"

"I wonderif I should let my hair go greyso my advice will be better."

"The Loneliness of the Military Historian Confess: it's my professionthat 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 cutand 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 horrorlike a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene,I do it in private and nobody seesbut the bathroom mirror. In general I might agree with you:women should not contemplate war,should not weigh tactics impart"

"It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical."

"They were wrong about the sun. It does not go down into the underworld at night. The sun leaves merelyand the underworld emerges. It can happen at any moment. It can happen in the morning,you in the kitchen going throughyour mild routines. Plate, cup, knife. All at once there’s no blue, no green,no warning."

"It's all about sex and territory,which are what will finish us offin the long run."

"This form of love is like the painof childbirth: so intenseit's hard to remember afterwards,"

"Messy love is better than none. I guess. I'm no authorityon sane living."

"Of course there are mothers,squeezing their breastsdry, pawning their bodies,shedding teeth for their children,or that’s our fond belief. But remember - Hanseland Gretel were dumped in the forestbecause their parents were starving."

"Like preachers, I sell vision,like perfume ads, desireor its facsimile. Like jokesor war, it’s all in the timing. I sell men back their worse suspicions:that everything’s for sale,"

"In the daylight we knowwhat’s gone is gone,but at night it’s different. Nothing gets finished,not dying, not mourning;"

"from under the ground, from under the waters,they clutch at us, they clutch at us,we won’t let go."

"The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner."