Margaret Atwood Quotes

... No one "gets away" with evil. Judgment always comes, only the timing is uncertain.

He who is in evil, is also in the punishment of evil.

Get what start the sinner may, Retribution, for all her lame leg, never quits his track.

Audiences like to see the bad guys get their comeuppance.

Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.

Be sure thy sin will find thee out.

Even the wicked get worse than they deserve.

Then the old man's face hardened. "What about you young man?" he asked flatly. "Would you like to get what you deserve?" Jones let that question hang in the air for a moment, then sighed, shook his head, and said "Me? I surely don't want what I deserve. I'm hoping for mercy, not justice.

If religion is a reaction of man, and nothing more, it seems to me that it represents a human desire for wrongdoers to be punished. I hate the idea of Idi Amin living in Saudi Arabia for the last 25 years of his life. That galls me to no end. I feel some sort of need for biblical atonement, or justice, or something. I like to believe there is some comeuppance, that karma kicks in at some point, even if it takes years or decades to happen. My girlfriend says this great thing that’s become my philosophy as well. 'I want to believe there's a heaven. But I can't not believe there's a hell.'

He who makes his law a curse, by his own law shall surely die.

The stories are most often about justice. In her stories, those who commit injustice, or act tyrannically, come to no good. They are punished.

When we die, our souls still live. If you are a gangster or a bastard or a crook, your soul inhabits a donkey or something terrible.

People in my books tend to get their just deserts, even if not at the hands of the police.

You must pay for your sins. If you have already paid, please ignore this notice.

For the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one.

As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this.

The payment for sins can be delayed. But they can't be avoided.

Approval or blame will follow in the world to come.

Heaven takes care that no man secures happiness by crime.

I'm a great believer in karma, and the vengeance that it serves up to those who are deliberately mean is generally enough for me.

Nobody does good to men with impunity.

Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.

To believe in a just law of cause and effect, carrying with it a punishment or a reward, is to believe in righteousness.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

If you have done terrible things, you must endure terrible things; for thus the sacred light of injustice shines bright.