Margaret Atwood Quotes

It seems we need someone to know us as we are - with all we have done - and forgive us. We need to tell. We need to be whole in someone's sight: Know this about me, and yet love me. Please.

Oh, one soon makes friends with invalids; and I need so much to have someone to live for.

Growing old is not a thing to watch. It cannot be forgiven in others. Alone, it can be borne. Even indulged.

At least I had that, one guy understood me.

The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.

I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me.

If you're living completely on your own, break out of solitary confinement. Seek to understand others, and help them understand you.

My mother is not a model. She is not perfect. That awareness is part of learning to love someone. Predicting the actions of someone is an act of love. We persist, even when we get it wrong. That's the beauty of love.

I'm not claiming divinity. I've never claimed purity of soul. I've never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can... But I still believe in peace, love and understanding.

The more specific you are about a very general feeling of loneliness is actually how you connect with people.

We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — "Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought."

Holly died without a friend to hold her hand. Artemis felt her go, another gift of the magic. He kept on counting, brushing away the tears on his cheeks.

What I write is emotionally honest and truthful as the human experience can be, to make people feel less alone, or at least that's the hope.

So many of us are reaching out, hoping someone out there will grab our hands and remind us we are not as alone as we fear.

The best thing you can do for yourself is to accept other people’s behavior and the choices they make. You may not agree with them, you may even wish them to do things differently, but accept it. Just as you would appreciate other people accepting the choices that you make.

There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady.

I am but a stranger ... as we all are. Lonely inside our separate skins, we cannot know each others pain and must bear our own in solitude. For my part, I have found that walking soothes it; and that, given luck, sometimes we find one to walk besides us ... at least for a little way.

We're all amateurs when it comes to love. Don't be too hard on each other.

The voice of life in me cannot reach the ear of life in you; but let us talk that we may not feel lonely.

A compassion swirled form nowhere in the high I was lost in. She needed me. She needed me to accept her for what she was. And when I realized that I had it within myself to give her at least this small part of me, the last of my fear melted away.

When we are most alone is when we embrace another's loneliness.

And in fact you're not like everyone else: you weren't ashamed just now to confess bad and even ridiculous things about yourself. Who would confess such things nowadays? No one, and people have even stopped feeling any need for self-judgment.

Impossible, I realize, to enter another’s solitude. If it is true that we can ever come to know another human being, even to a small degree, it is only to the extent that he is willing to make himself known. A man will say: I am cold. Or else he will say nothing, and we will see him shivering. Either way, we will know that he is cold. But what of the man who says nothing and does not shiver? Where all is intractable, here all is hermetic and evasive, one can do no more than observe. But whether one can make sense of what he observes is another matter entirely

"Cammie!" I'll never forget the tone of Macey's voice in that moment. "Cam," she said slowly, moving toward me, "I know how it feels to be watched every second of every day. I know what it's like to trust fewer and fewer people until it seems like you are completely alone in the world. I know you think the only things that are left in your life are the bad things. I know what you're feeling, Cam." Her hands were on my shoulders. Her blue eyes were staring into mine. "I know."

I am more sensitive than other people. Things that other people would not notice awaken a distinct echo in me, and in such moments of lucidity, when I look at myself, I see that I am alone, all alone, all alone.