The Blind Assassin Quotes

The ancestral voices were prophesying war because ancestral voices never shut up, and they hate to be wrong, and war is a sure thing, sooner or later. ~ Margaret Atwood

I avoided my eyes while brushing my teeth, then climbed into bed with a copy of _The Blind Assassin_, because if you're not with the book you want, you might as well want the book you're with.
--Melissa Albert, _The Hazel Wood_ ~ Melissa Albert

How I would like to have them back, those pointless afternoons - the boredom, the aimlessness, the unformed possibilities. ~ Margaret Atwood

She stubs out her cigarette in the brown glass ashtray, then settles herself against him, ear to his chest. She likes to hear his voice this way, as if it begins not in his throat but in his body, like a hum or a growl, or like a voice speaking from deep underground. Like the blood moving through her own heart: a word, a word, a word. ~ Margaret Atwood

The poems that used to entrance me in the days of Miss Violence now struck me as overdone and sickly. Alas, burthen, thine, cometh, aweary - the archaic language of unrequited love. I was irritated with such words, which rendered the unhappy lovers - I could now see - faintly ridiculous, like poor moping Miss Violence herself. Soft-edged, blurry, soggy, like a bun fallen into the water. Nothing you'd want to touch, ~ Margaret Atwood

One look at a banana and you can tell it came from outer space. ~ Margaret Atwood

I didn't know I was about to be left with her idea of me; with her idea of my goodness pinned onto me like a badge and no chance to throw it back at her (as would have been the normal course of affairs with a mother and a daughter - if she'd lived, as I'd grown older). ~ Margaret Atwood

Already my childhood seemed far away - a remote age, faded and bittersweet, like dried flowers. Did I regret its loss, did I want it back? I didn't think so. ~ Margaret Atwood

Sometimes there would be couples, arm in arm - laughing, happy, amorous. Victims of an enormous fraud, and at the same time its perpetrators, or so I felt. ~ Margaret Atwood

Stick a shovel in the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light. ~ Margaret Atwood

You don't know won't hurt you. A dubious maxim: sometimes what you don't know can hurt you very much. (The Blind Assassin, 137). ~ Margaret Atwood

Spicy food and I have a close relationship - an obsessive one, in fact. If it's spicy, I want it. I want to sweat and shake and go half blind from the searing pain ... which, now that I put it that way, seems really suggestive. But spicy stuff is addictive. That's a known fact of science. ~ Maureen Johnson

I still think Connie was a human man, a very, very good one - but a man. I have been wrong in my judgments many times before; if now I am ignorant and blind, I'm sorry, but it's no new thing. If that should be the case though, it means that I have had great privileges in my life, perhaps more so than any man alive today. Because it means that on the fields and farms of England, on the airstrips of the desert and the jungle, in the hangars of the Persian Gulf and on the tarmacs of the southern islands, I have walked and talked with God. ~ Nevil Shute

The majority of people are carried along like the falling stone, obedient to environment, outside influences and internal moods, desires etc., not to speak of the desires and wills of others stronger than themselves, heredity, environment, and suggestion, carrying them along without resistance on their part, or the exercise of the Will. Moved like the pawns on the checkerboard of life, they play their parts and are laid aside after the game is over. But the Masters, knowing the rules of the game, rise above the plane of material life, and placing themselves in touch with the higher powers of their nature, dominate their own moods, characters, qualities, and polarity, as well as the environment surrounding them and thus become Movers in the game, instead of Pawns - Causes instead of Effects. The Masters do not escape the Causation of the higher planes, but fall in with the higher laws, and thus master circumstances on the lower plane. They thus form a conscious part of the Law, instead of being mere blind instruments. While they Serve on the Higher Planes, they Rule on the Material Plane. ~ Three Initiates

We cannot let our respect for the FBI blind us from the fact the FBI has sometimes come up short of our expectations. ~ Orrin Hatch

Who would want to enter the soiled Temple of Justice, wherein lies the corpse of justice, slain by her very guardians? And now her killers make mock of the sacred process, selling replicas of her blind virtue to the highest bidder. ~ Rohinton Mistry

If you're deaf, dumb, and blind to what's happening in the world, you're under no obligation to do anything. But if you know what's happening and you don't do anything but sit on your ass, then you're nothing but a punk ~ Assata Shakur

Let us learn from the English rulers the simple fact that the oppressors are blind to the enormity of their own misdeeds. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Well, tell me boy," she said, "what have you been reading?"
Craftily he picked his way across the waste land of printery,
naming as his favorites those books which he felt would win her
approval. As he had read everything, good and bad, that the town
library contained, he was able to make an impressive showing.
Sometimes she stopped him to question about a book--he rebuilt the
story richly with a blazing tenacity of detail that satisfied her
wholly. She was excited and eager--she saw at once how abundantly
she could feed this ravenous hunger for knowledge, experience,
wisdom. And he knew suddenly the joy of obedience: the wild
ignorant groping, the blind hunt, the desperate baffled desire was
now to be ruddered, guided, controlled. The way through the
passage to India, that he had never been able to find, would now be
charted for him. Before he went away she had given him a fat
volume of nine hundred pages, shot through with spirited engravings
of love and battle, of the period he loved best.
He was drowned deep at midnight in the destiny of the man who
killed the bear, the burner of windmills and the scourge of
banditry, in all the life of road and tavern in the Middle Ages, in
valiant and beautiful Gerard, the seed of genius, the father of
Erasmus. Eugene thought The Cloister and the Hearth the best story
he had ever read. ~ Thomas Wolfe

Justice may be blind but it loves the sound of money. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Remember to recognize the small successes that you will have. Don't let the brightness of that big goal blind you to what happens on the way toward the goal. Meet one wave at a time and enjoy what progress you make. I want you please not to be taken up in the undertow of pessimism. ~ Lucille Ball

Before I write I let my mind go blind and let the lord do his thing. ~ Tupac Shakur

MAT21.14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them. ~ Anonymous

Now the Gang of McCrook was a miserable mob,
for whom robbing you blind was an everyday job.

They were known for their violence and criminal feats,
for a seedy selection of sinful deceits
from robbery, arson, and pyramid schemes,
to snatching the mascots from basketball teams.

They had once robbed a pet shop of all of its cash,
and they never - not ever - recycled their trash! ~ Robert Paul Weston

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honored poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Faith is the blind heart that sees better than an opened eye ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Suddenly an ice-cold wind went through the vast hall, and the blind mother could feel that Death had arrived.
'How have you been able to find your way here?' he asked, 'how have you been able to get here faster than I have?'
'I'm a mother, she said. ~ Hans Christian Andersen

One can only return to the fact that even the most ordinary, good-hearted, intelligent people are literally prone to believing the most blatantly nonsensical untruths. And this comes from the realization that there are some opinions and some beliefs so incredibly inane, we may actually on occasion feel insane for not believing them; and that is probably because in giving the benefit of the doubt we self-doubt, we convince ourselves into lame passivity and blind acceptance, we tell ourselves, 'Maybe I'm just missing something here. ~ Criss Jami

I'm a big Michael Lewis fan. That said, my favorite Lewis book was 'The Blind Side.' ~ Bart Chilton

I've lost my mind

Your love's made me blind

I can't even speak

Your love's made me weak



But if you watch me I'll show you

And if you let me I'll hold you

So the words that I can't say

You'll hear anyway

You'll know how much I long for you

How every note's a song for you

You'll know

How I just want to breathe you in

And lose myself inside your skin

I'll hold you and you'll know ~ Amy Harmon

I think it's best if I reserve judgement on the perpetrator of this crime. If I jump to conclusions too soon, I might well blind myself to the right path when it's in front of me. ~ Jacqueline Winspear

The lantern's dim light hardly cut through the darkness. ~ I.D. Blind

It takes more courage to reveal insecurities than to hide them, more strength to relate to people then to dominate them, more 'manhood' to abide by thought-out principles rather than blind reflex. Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles and an immature mind. ~ Alex Karras

All the weapons of hate and cruelty cannot stand against God's love. The spiritually blind and intentionally evil try to oppose it, but they cannot ultimately win. That's because all creation was formed and is sustained by God ~ Stormie O'martian

We spend much of our lives going about completely blind to reality, and yet we still have the gall to act victimized when it invariably catches up to us. ~ Nenia Campbell

Experience has taught me that any kind of political grouping is oppressive. It's the blind mass that crushes the individual. ~ Gao Xingjian

It is truly wonderful," he said, "how easily Society can console itself for the worst of its shortcomings with a little bit of clap-trap. The machinery it has set up for the detection of crime is miserably ineffective - and yet only invent a moral epigram, saying that it works well, and you blind everybody to its blunders from that moment. Crimes cause their own detection, do they? And murder will out (another moral epigram), will it? Ask Coroners who sit at inquests in large towns if that is true, Lady Glyde. Ask secretaries of life-assurance companies if that is true, Miss Halcombe. Read your own public journals. In the few cases that get into the newspapers, are there not instances of slain bodies found, and no murderers ever discovered? Multiply the cases that are reported by the cases that are not reported, and the bodies that are found by the bodies that are not found, and what conclusion do you come to? This. That there are foolish criminals who are discovered, and wise criminals who escape. The hiding of a crime, or the detection of a crime, what is it? A trial of skill between the police on one side, and the individual on the other. When the criminal is a brutal, ignorant fool, the police in nine cases out of ten win. When the criminal is a resolute, educated, highly-intelligent man, the police in nine cases out of ten lose. If the police win, you generally hear all about it. If the police lose, you generally hear nothing. And on this tottering foundation you build u ~ Wilkie Collins

The blind audition process can be nerve-wracking. ~ Christina Aguilera

It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine
something like being blind, while people talk of the sky. ~ George Eliot

Beyond its romance, 'Titanic' offers an indelibly wrenching story of blind arrogance and its terrible consequences. It's the rare Hollywood adventure film that brings mythic images of tragedy - the fall of Icarus, the ruin of Ozymandias - so easily to mind. ~ Janet Maslin

The Universe wants to play. Those who refuse out of dry spiritual greed & choose pure contemplation forfeit their humanity - those who refuse out of dull anguish, those who hesitate, lose their chance at divinity - those who mold themselves blind masks of Ideas & thrash around seeking some proof of their own solidity end by seeing out of dead men's eyes. ~ Hakim Bey

For no reason at all, I thought of New Year's Eve, when all those people crowd into Times Square and scream like jackals as the lighted ball slides down the pole, ready to shed its thin party glare on three hundred and sixty-five new days in this best of all possible worlds. I have always wondered what it would be like to be caught in one of those crowds, screaming and not able to hear your own voice, your individuality momentarily wiped out and replaced with the blind empathic overslop of the crowd's lurching, angry anticipation, hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder with no one in particular. ~ Richard Bachman

Every one of us is blind and deaf until our eyes are opened to our fellowmen, until our ears hear the voice of humanity. ~ Helen Keller

I don't pretend to understand the mystery of love, but this time it was more than sex, more than using a woman's body. It was being lifted off the earth, outside fear and torment, being part of something greater than myself. I was lifted out of the dark cell of my own mind, to become part of someone else -- just as I had experienced it that day on the couch in therapy. It was the first step outward to the universe -- beyond the universe -- because in it and with it we merged to recreate and perpetuate the human spirit. Expanding and bursting outward, and contracting and forming inward, it was the rhythm of being -- of breathing, of heartbeat, of day and night -- and the rhythm of our bodies set off an echo in my mind. It was the way it had been back there in that strange vision. The gray murk lifted from my mind, and through it the light pierced into my brain (how strange that light should blind!), and my body was absorbed back into a great sea of space, washed under in a strange baptism. My body shuddered with giving, and her body shuddered its acceptance. ~ Daniel Keyes

It is infatuation that is blind. Love sees the flaws only too clearly, but goes on caring just the same, in spite of all ~ Joan Smith

The galleys ... had been dirven onto the rocks of Skagos, the isle of unicorns and cannibals where even the Blind Bastard had feared to land. ~ George R R Martin

There is only one way in the world to be distinguished. Follow your instinct! Be yourself, and you'll be somebody. Be one more blind follower of the blind, and you will have the oblivion you desire. ~ Bliss Carman

The Bible never tells us to take a blind leap of faith into the darkness and hope that there's somebody out there. The Bible calls us to jump out of the darkness and into the light. That is not a blind leap. The faith that the New Testament calls us to is a faith rooted and grounded in something that God makes clear is the truth. ~ R.C. Sproul

Over time even two armed blind men in a room can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

Tell me, how would you feel if everyone screamed and ran when they saw you coming, or hunted you down like a criminal? How long would you sanity last?" ... " ... Tell me something else, if all the world was blind save one man, wouldn't the world be inclined to call that man's sight a hallucination? And the man with eyes might even come to agree with the world. ~ Walter M. Miller Jr.

Sociology professor Osagie K. Obasogie recently produced some ingenious research - he interviewed people blind from birth and found the same attitudes about race as in the sighted world. ~ Anonymous

But, since we are little and therefore need but little, why is little not enough for us? Because we sense pleasure. Like blind men who feel their way along, we have presentiments of the intense pleasure of living.
And if we have presentiments, it is also because we feel that we are being alarmingly used by God, we feel alarmingly that we are being used with an intense and uninterrupted pleasure - moreover, up to now our salvation has been one of being at least so used, we are not useless, we have been made intense use of by God; body and soul and life are for that: for someone's interchange and ecstasy. Disquieted, we feel that we are being used every minute - but that awakens in us the disquieting desire to use as well. ~ Clarice Lispector

The oubliette, I was not a mouse, I was a vampire, I was a blind vampire who would heal, of course, eventually, and see again. Stop, I told myself. I drew in a deep breath and smelled ancient death, crushed weeds, rotting metal, stone. I had no idea where the oubliette was located. I was simply at the bottom of it, standing in cold, filthy water and thinking that this time, my favorite slippers were well and truly ruined. Such a pity. ~ Rachel Caine

It came to me then, I am sure, for the first time, how promiscuous, how higgledy-piggledy was the whole of that jumble of mines and homes, collieries and potbanks, railway yards, canals, schools, forges and blast furnaces, churches, chapels, allotment hovels, a vast irregular agglomeration of ugly smoking accidents in which men lived as happy as frogs in a dustbin. Each thing jostled and damaged the other things about it, each thing ignored the other things about it; the smoke of the furnace defiled the potbank clay, the clatter of the railway deafened the worshipers in church, the public-house thrust corruption at the school doors, the dismal homes squeezed miserably amidst the monstrosities of industrialism, with an effect of groping imbecility. Humanity choked amidst its products, and all its energy went in increasing its disorder, like a blind stricken thing that struggles and sinks in a morass. ~ H.G.Wells

We are to come to the Word in a spirit of humility and contrition because we recognize that we are sinful, that we are often blind to our sinfulness, and that we need the enlightening power of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. ~ Jerry Bridges