4 Margaret Atwood Quotes on Survival

Margaret Atwood quotes on survival

12. When you hear me singing you get the rifle down and the flashlight, aiming for my brain, but you always miss and when you set out the poison I piss on it to warn the others.

18. In order to avoid her death, her particular death, with wrung neck and swollen tongue, she must marry the hangman.

19. She must transform his hands so they will be willing to twist the rope around throats that have been singled out as hers was, throats other than hers. She must marry the hangman or no one, but that is not so bad. Who else is there to marry?

26. NOTES: Jean Cololere, a drummer in the colonial troops at Quebec, was imprisoned for duelling in 1751. In the cell next to his was Francoise Laurent, who had been sentenced to hang for stealing. Except for letters of pardon, the only way at the time for someone under sentence of death to escape hanging was, for a man, to become a hangman, or, for a woman, to marry one. Francoise persuaded Cololere to apply for the vacant (and undesirable) post of executioner, and also to marry her. -Condensed from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume III, 1741-1770