Margaret Lea Quotes

Reading can be dangerous. ~ Diane Setterfield

Lea found that she was saying things, saying them pretty loudly, but had no clear concept of what she was saying. [Sean and Andy's] names, maybe. The seventy-two names of God. The capitals of all fifty states.

Love. That word featured in there a lot. Which made sense. To the extent that Lea had any sense left at all.

She was coming. Stupid word, coming. Arriving seemed more like it. Or exploding. Was there a word that meant both?

If there were, it would have described what she was doing. Again, very loudly. ~ K.D. West

Gain ten pounds and they put you in Solitary. ~ Margaret Atwood

It's good to be able to laugh at yourself and the problems you face in life. Sense of humor can save you. ~ Margaret Cho

He watched their faces, and he knew each meant desperately what she said because they loved each other, and deep inside surely each knew the words were false, that the true words were those unspoken. ~ Margaret Craven

The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind. ~ Margaret Sanger

I'm not a mom, but I think the word 'mother' is about wisdom. ~ Margaret Cho

The men who espoused unpopular causes may have been considered misguided, but they were rarely attacked for their morals or their masculinity. Women who did the same thing were apt to be denounced as harlots or condemned for being unfeminine - an all-purpose word that was used to describe almost any category of female behavior of which men disapproved. ~ Margaret Truman Daniel

Riches make cowards of us ... ~ Margaret Ayer Barnes

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.
I had a rage in my heart for many years, against Mary Whitney, and especially against Nancy Montgomery; against the two of them both, for letting themselves be done to death in the way that they did, and for leaving me behind with the full weight of it. For a long time I could not find it in me to pardon them. ~ Margaret Atwood

I feel despised there, for having so little money; also for once having had so much. I never actually had it, of course. Father had it, and then Richard. But money was imputed to me, the same way crimes are imputed to those who've simply been present at them. ~ Margaret Atwood

Yet within a miles, Margaret knew of house after house, where she would for her own sake, and her mother for her Aunt Shaw's, would be welcomed, if they came to gladness, or even in peace of mind. If they came sorrowing, and wanting sympathy in a complicated trouble like the present, then they would be felt as a shadow in all these houses of intimate acquaintances. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Once in a while, though, he went on binges. He would sneak into bookstores or libraries, lurk around the racks where the little magazines were kept; sometimes he'd buy one. Dead poets were his business, living ones his vice. Much of the stuff he read was crap and he knew it; still, it gave him an odd lift. Then there would be the occasional real poem, and he would catch his breath. Nothing else could drop him through space like that, then catch him; nothing else could peel him open. ~ Margaret Atwood

I love you, your courage and your stubbornness and your fire and your utter ruthlessness. How much do I love you? So much that a moment ago I would have outraged the hospitality of the house which has sheltered me and my family, forgotten the best wife any man ever had - enough to take you here in the mud like a - "
She struggled with a chaos of thoughts and there was a cold pain in her heart as if an icicle had pierced it. She said haltingly: "If you felt like that - and didn't take me - then you don't love me."
"I can never make you understand. ~ Margaret Mitchell

It pays to know the enemy - not least because at some time you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend. ~ Margaret Thatcher

When you've spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment, it's exciting to have a real crisis on your hands. ~ Margaret Thatcher

To talk over a quarrel, with its inevitable accompaniment of self-justification, is too much like handling cobwebs to be very successful. ~ Margaret Deland

He feels like saying that of course there's lint on Mr. Wiggly, or dust at any rate, or maybe rust; what does she expect, because as she is well aware Mr. Wiggly has been on the shelf for some time. ~ Margaret Atwood

My name isn't Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it's forbidden. I tell myself it doesn't matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter. I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I'll come back to dig up, one day. I think of this name as buried. This name has an aura around it, like an amulet, some charm that's survived from an unimaginably distant past. I lie in my single bed at night, with my eyes closed, and the name floats there behind my eyes, not quite within reach, shining in the dark. ~ Margaret Atwood

She looks like a very young old person, or a very old young person; but then, she's looked that way ever since she was two. ~ Margaret Atwood

Well, love don't count one rass unless it's a verb. ~ Margaret Cezair-Thompson

Salt is the only rock directly consumed by man. It corrodes but preserves, desiccates but is wrested from the water. It has fascinated man for thousands of years not only as a substance he prized and was willing to labour to obtain, but also as a generator of poetic and of mythic meaning. The contradictions it embodies only intensify its power and its links with experience of the sacred. ~ Margaret Visser

Though as he'd say, what is 'belief' but a willingness to suspend the negatives? ~ Margaret Atwood

You are a transitional generation, said Aunt Lydia. It is the hardest for you. We know the sacrifices you are being expected to make. It is hard when men revile you. For the ones who come after you, it will be easier. They will accept their duties with willing hearts.
She did not say: Because they will have no memories, of any other way.
She said: Because they won't want things they can't have. ~ Margaret Atwood

Fuck that shit, I told them, I've started this and I'm going to finish it. ~ Margaret Atwood

I sink down into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing ... .
I'm a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. Inside it is a space, huge as the sky at night and dark and curved like that, though black-red rather than black. ~ Margaret Atwood

I would tell 17-year-olds to be proud of who you are. Don't try to change yourself for others. Focus on school and your future. Boys and friends will come and go, just focus on you and your future. ~ Lea Michele

Most of us discover early on that it's safer to hide behind prayers that can't be measured, petitions so nebulous they don't require intervention from God. ~ Margaret Feinberg

We have been ruled by men who live by illusions ... the illusion that there is some other way of creating wealth than hard work and satisfying your customers. ~ Margaret Thatcher

We have nowhere else to go ... this is all we have. ~ Margaret Mead

Attack, voracious
eating, and flight:
it's a sound routine
for staying alive on edges. ~ Margaret Atwood

Behind the studied blankness of her gaze, revolt must have been simmering. I recognized that surliness, that stubbornness, that captive-princess indignation, which must be kept hidden until enough weapons have been collected. ~ Margaret Atwood

If you grow up where a snow mountain lifts its proud crown on the home horizon, in some strange way it becomes a member of the family. ~ Margaret Craven

There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes. ~ Margaret Fuller

If a woman like Eva Peron with no ideals can get that far, think how far I can go with the ideals that I have. ~ Margaret Thatcher

This psychic wound appears to be suffered largely by men. Women writers weren't included in the Romantic roll-call, and never had a lot of Genius medals stuck onto them; in fact, the word 'genius' and the word 'woman' just don't fit together in our language, because the kind of eccentricity expected of male 'geniuses' would simply result in the label 'crazy,' should it be practiced by a woman. ~ Margaret Atwood

Against the long years when family bonds make up all that is happiest in life, there must always be reckoned those moments of agitation and revolution, during which the bosom of a family is the most unrestful and disturbing place in existence ... ~ Margaret Oliphant

That image - of a little child being suffocated, or almost suffocated, by others who thought the whole thing was a game - melded with the furtive nocturnal slugs, and my solitary pacing and singing, and the separate, claustrophobic stairway, and the charmless abstract painting, and the gold-framed mirror, and the slithery green satin bedspread, and became inseperable from them. It wasn't a cheerful composite. As a memory, it is more like a fog bank than a sunlit meadow.
Yet I think of that period as having been a happy time in my life.
Happy is the wrong word. Important. ~ Margaret Atwood

Pain is no longer pain when it is past. ~ Margaret Junkin Preston

I love the sea with its impenetrable fathoms, its wash and undertow, and rasp of shingle sucked anew. ~ Margaret E. Barber

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph. ~ Margaret Thatcher

She raised her chin and her pale, black-fringed eyes sparkled in the moonlight. Ellen had never told her that desire and attainment were two different matters; life had not taught her that the race was not to the swift. She lay in the silvery shadows with courage rising and made the plans that a sixteen-year-old makes when life has been so pleasant that defeat is an impossibility and a pretty dress and a clear complexion are weapons to vanquish fate. ~ Margaret Mitchell

The capacity for friendship usually goes with highly developed civilizations. The ability to cultivate people differs by culture and class; but on the whole, educated people have more ways to make friends ... In England, for instance, you find everyone in your class has read the same books. Here, people grope for something in common-like a newly engaged girl who came to me and said, It's absolutely wonderful! His uncle and my cousin were on the same football team. ~ Margaret Mead

Any good marriage involves a certain amount of play-acting. ~ Margaret Millar

A thing is valued, she says, only if it is rare and hard to get. We want you to be valued, girls. Think of yourselves as pearls. We, sitting in our rows, eyes down, we make her salivate morally. We are hers to define, we must suffer her adjectives. ~ Margaret Atwood

Temptation comes next. At the Center, temptation was anything much more than eating and sleeping. Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you, Aunt Lydia used to say. Maybe ~ Margaret Atwood

Walking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will discover behind them something that will truly be worth seeing, she feels as if her feet are not on cement at all but on ice. The blade of the skate floats, she knows, on a thin film of water, which it melts by pressure and which freezes behind it. This is the freedom of the present tense, this sliding edge. ~ Margaret Atwood

It's probably a form of childish curiosity that keeps me going as a fiction writer. I ... want to open everybody's bureau drawers and see what they keep in there. I'm nosy. ~ Margaret Atwood

Nothing has given me more hope recently than to observe how simple conversations give birth to actions that can change lives and restore our faith in the future. There is no more powerful way to initiate significant social change than to start a conversation. When a group of people discover that they share a common concern, that's when the process of change begins. ~ Margaret J. Wheatley

I've been prepared for almost anything; except absence, except silence. ~ Margaret Atwood