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Book: Alias Grace
Quotes of Book: Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood _ Alias Grace
I never do such things, however. I only consider them. If I did them, they would be sure I had gone mad again. Gone mad is what they say, and sometimes Run mad, as if mad is a direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don't go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in.
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Margaret Atwood _ Alias Grace
He has tried imagining her as a prostitute-he often plays this private mental game with various women he encounters-but he can't picture any man actually paying for her services. It would be like paying to be run over by a wagon, and would be, like that experience, a distinct threat to the health.
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Margaret Atwood _ Alias Grace
a good portion of the women in the Asylum were no madder than the Queen of England. Many were sane enough when sober, as their madness came out of a bottle, which is a kind I knew very well. One of them was in there to get away from her husband, who beat her black and blue, he was the mad one but nobody would lock him up; and another said she went mad in the autumns, as she had no house and it was warm in the Asylum, and if she didn't do a fair job of running mad she would freeze to death; but then in the spring she would become sane again because it was good weather and she could go off and tramp in the woods and fish,
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Margaret Atwood _ Alias Grace
but it is my true belief that it was the doctor that killed her with his knife; him and the gentleman between them. For it is not always the one that strikes the blow, that is the actual murderder;
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Margaret Atwood _ Alias Grace
My letters! All dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string.… -ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1850.
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Margaret Atwood _ Alias Grace
There is a little verse I remember from a child: Needles and pins, needles and pins,When a man marries his trouble begins. It doesn't say when a woman's trouble begins.
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Margaret Atwood _ Alias Grace
{...} he often talked to himself and he was the best conversationalist he knew; {...}
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Margaret Atwood _ Alias Grace
On my Tree of Paradise, I intend to put a border of snakes entwined; they will look like vines or just a cable pattern to others, as I will make the eyes very small, but they will be snakes to me; as without a snake or two, the main part of the story would be missing.
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Margaret Atwood _ Alias Grace
The truth is that very few understand the truth about forgiveness. It is not the culprits who need to be forgiven; rather it is the victims, because they are the ones who cause all the trouble. If they were only less weak and careless, and more foresightful, and if they would keep from blundering into difficulties, think of all the sorrow in the world that would be spared.
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Margaret Atwood _ Alias Grace
My mother said Aunt Pauline meant kindly but had standards, which were all very well for those that could afford them.
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Margaret Atwood _ Alias Grace
I would like to be found. I would like to see. Or to be seen. I wonder if, in the eye of God, it amounts to the same thing.
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Margaret Atwood _ Alias Grace
Lying," says MacKenzie. "A severe term, surely. Has she been lying to you, you ask? Let me put it this way-did Scheherazade lie? Not in her own eyes; indeed, the stories she told ought never to be subjected to the harsh categories of Truth and Falsehood. They belong in another realm altogether. Perhaps Grace Marks has merely been telling you what she needs to tell, in order to accomplish the desired end."
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