Dearly Quotes

“The world that we think we see
is only our best guess.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly: New Poems

“Lions don’t know they are lions.
They don’t know how brave they are.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“That room has been static for me so long:
an emptiness. a void. a silence
containing an unheard story
ready for me to unlock.

Let there be plot.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“If you were a song
What song would you be?

Would you be the voice that sings,
Would you be the music?

When I am singing this song for you
You are not empty air

You are here,
One breath and then another:

You are here with me...”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“If there were no emptiness, there would be no life.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“The hands reaching in
among the leaves and spines
were once my mother's.
I've passed them on.
Decades ahead, you'll study your own
temporary hands, and you'll remember.
Don't cry, this is what happens.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“You’ll be here but not here,
a muscle memory, like hanging a hat
on a hook that’s not there any longer.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Me, it’s the heart:
that’s the part lacking.
I used to want one:
a dainty cushion of red silk
dangling from a blood ribbon,
fit for sticking pins in.
But I’ve changed my mind.
Hearts hurt.

— Margaret Atwood, from “The Tin Woodwoman Gets a Massage ,” Dearly: New Poems (Ecco, 2020)”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“After we're gone
the work of our knives will survive this.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“That's who is waiting for me:
an invisible man
defined by a dotted line:

the shape of an absence
in your place at the table,
sitting across from me,
eating toast and eggs as usual
or walking ahead up the drive,
a rustling of the fallen leaves,
a slight thickening of the air.

It's you in the future,
we both know that.
You'll be here but not here,
a muscle memory, like hanging a hat
on a hook that's not there any longer.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Dearly beloved, gathered here together in this closed drawer, fading now, I miss you. I miss the missing, those who left earlier. I miss even those who are still here. I miss you all dearly. Dearly do I sorrow for you.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Poetry deals with the core of human existence: life, death, renewal, change; as well as fairness and unfairness, injustice and sometimes justice. The world in all its variety.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly: Poems

“Oh yes, In Love,
that demented rose-red circus tent
whose half-light forgives all visuals,
fig-leaves our lovers,
and softens our own brains
and the pain of our sawdust pratfalls.
 
So tempting, that midway faux-marble arch,
both funfair and classical—
so Greek, so Barnum,
such a beacon,
with a sign in gas-blue neon:
 
Love! This way!
In!”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Here are the tulips,
budded and full-blown,
their swoops and dips, their gloss and poses,
the satin of their darks.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“You didn't need it anyway,
it attracted too much attention.
Better with only a shadow.

Someone wants your shadow.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“The world that we think we see
is only our best guess.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Beads can be used for counting. As in rosaries. But I don’t like stones around my neck.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly: New Poems

“It was a problem in comic books: drawing an invisible man.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“My mother, sleeping.
Curled up like a spring fern
although she’s almost a century.

She’s dreaming, however.
I can tell by the way she’s frowning,
and her strong breathing.

Maybe she’s making her way
down one more white river,
or walking across the ice.

There are no more adventures for her
in the upper air, in this room
with her bed and the family pictures.

Let’s go out and fight the storm,
she used to say. So maybe
she’s fighting it.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly: Poems

“And when I go that way, grow fur, start howling, scratch at your airwaves: no matter who I claim I am or how I love you, turn the key. Bar the window.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“The aliens arrive. We like the part where we get saved. We like the part where we get destroyed. Why do those feel so similar? Either way, it's an end.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“It’s an old word, fading now. Dearly did I wish. Dearly did I long for. I loved him dearly.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“No, because we don't have minds
as such these days, but tiny snarls
of firefly neural pathways
signalling no/yes/no, suspended
in a greyish cloud
inside a round bone bowl.
Yes: lovely. No: too lonely. Yes.
The world that we think we see
is only our best guess.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Many things that are not what you want
arrive in the disguise of flowers.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Don't look behind, they say; you'll turn to salt. Why not, though? Why not look? Isn't it glittery? Isn't it pretty, back there?”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“After we’re gone the work of our knives will survive us.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly: New Poems

“Life, life, you sang with every cell, compelled into dancing as the spell held you enchained and you burned air.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Doling out the forks,
little crab claws,
tines filched from lions,

and the knives, incisors
from the tigers we once worshipped,
lacking raw-meat-shearing
tools of our own.

Though our feastfires have faded to candles
we're hooked on the same old gods,
much diminished.

They no longer talk to us
but that's okay:
we do enough talking.

So, Nature. We sit around it,
chew it into rags
with our artful fangs and talons.

Spoons, however:
there are no spoons in Nature,
or not on animals.
We imitate ourselves.

Here, let me help you:
two cupped hands”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Outside we see a shrivelling,
but from within, as felt
by heart and breath and inner skin, how different,
how vast how calm how part of everything
how starry dark. Last breath. Divine
perhaps. Perhaps relief. The lovers caught
and sealed inside a cavern,
voices raised in one last hovering
duet, until the small wax light
goes out. Well anyway
I held your hand and maybe
you held mine
as the stone or universe closed in
around you.
Though not me. I'm still outside.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Are you an evening bird
Watching the moon
Singing Alone, Alone,
Singing Dead Too Soon?”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly