“What you don’t know won’t hurt you. A dubious maxim: sometimes what you don’t know can hurt you very much.”
Work
More than fifty years on, Iris Chase is remembering Laura's mysterious death. And so begins an extraordinary and compelling story of two sisters and their secrets. Set against a panoramic backdrop of twentieth-century history, The Blind Assassin is an epic tale of memory, intrigue and betrayal...
Quotes
Showing 1-11 of 11
Margaret Atwood
Canonical work source
“What you don’t know won’t hurt you. A dubious maxim: sometimes what you don’t know can hurt you very much.”
“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusin...”
“Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.”
“Time: old cold time, old sorrow, settling down in layers like silt in a pond.”
“What is it the I'll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which isn't yours to bestow. Only a listener, perhaps; only someone who will see me. Don't pretti...”
“There were a lot of gods. Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything.”
“This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love.”
“Perhaps they were looking for passion; perhaps they delved into this book as into a mysterious parcel - a gift box at the bottom of which, hidden in layers of rustling tissue paper, lay some...”
“If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God...”
“How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, how could we live? If you knew what was g...”
“She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation. In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. W...”