# Quote — Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

> As with all knowledge, once you knew it, you couldn't imagine how it was that you hadn't known it before. Like stage magic, knowledge before you knew it took place before your very eyes, but you were looking elsewhere.

- Author: [Margaret Atwood](https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood.md)
- Book: [The Year of the Flood](https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood/the-year-of-the-flood.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood#The_Year_of_the_Flood_(2009)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood/the-year-of-the-flood/as-with-all

## More from this book

> time is not a thing that passes, said Pilar: it’s a sea on which you float.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood/the-year-of-the-flood/time-is-not.md)

> Glenn used to say the reason you can’t really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, “I’ll be dead,” you’ve said the word I, and so you’re still alive inside the sentence. And that’s how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul — it was a consequence of grammar.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood/the-year-of-the-flood/glenn-used-to-say.md)

> “It's better to hope than mope!”

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/margaret-atwood/the-year-of-the-flood/its-better-to-hope.md)