The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood (3)

I wonder which is preferable - to walk around all your life swollen up with your secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin - everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that belonged to you alone - and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood (2)

Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.

I listened humbly resentfully. I knew I did not have charm. Neither Laura nor I had it. We were too secretive for charm, or else too blunt. We'd never learned it, because Reenie had spoiled us. She felt who we were ought to be enough for anybody.

I wonder which is preferable - to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or t0 have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin - everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone - and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood

I have a couple of pages left of the thick book that is "The Blind Assassin" and many quotes that will turn up on this blog soon enough.

Here is one.

She'll live on apples and soda crackers, on cups of tea and glasses of milk. Cans of baked beans and corned beef. Also on fried eggs when available, and slices of toast, which she'll eat at the corner café where the newsboys and early drunks also eat. Veterans will eat there too, more and more of them as the months go past: men missing hands, arms, legs, ears, eyes. She'll wish to talk with them, but she won't because any interest from her would be sure to be misunderstood. Her body as usual would get in the way of free speech. Therefore she will only eavesdrop.