The Handmaid's Tale Quotes - Page 16 | Just Great DataBase

The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh. And sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done (...)

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection." Here he looks us over. "All," he repeats. "But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence

You can’t help what you feel, Moira once said, but you can help how you behave.

your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but

There were places you didn't want to walk, precautions you took that had to do with locks on windows and doors, drawing the curtains, leaving on lights. These things you did were like prayers; you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.But all of that was pertinent only in the night, and had nothing to do with the man you loved, at least in daylight.

I'm interested in your opinion. You're intelligent enough, you must have an opinion. About what? I say. What we've done, he says. How things have worked out. I hold myself very still. I try to empty my mind. I think about the sky, at night, when there's no moon. I have no opinion, I say. He sighs, relaxes his hands, but leaves them on my shoulders. He knows what I think, all right. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, is what he says. We thought we could do better. Better? I say, in a small voice. How can he think this is better? Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.

For every rule there is always an exception: this too can be depended upon.

In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.   In

I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings, I can stroke myself, under the dry white sheets, in the dark, but I too am dry and white, hard, granular; it's like running my hand over a plateful of dried rice; it's like snow. There's something dead about it, something deserted. I am like a room where things once happened and now nothing does, except the pollen of the weeds that grow up outside the window, blowing in as dust across the floor.   Here

The sun is free, it is still there to be enjoyed.

I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, then at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish it were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one's life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow.(...)I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.I've tried to put some of the good things in as well. Flowers, for instance, because where would we be without them?

Women can't hold property anymore, she said. It's a new law.

It can’t last forever. Others have thought suchthings, in bad times before this, and they were always right, they did get out one way or another, and it didn’tlast forever. Although for them it may have lasted all the forever they had.

The driver is going over it with a chamois, lovingly. This at least hasn't changed, the way men caress good cars. He's

That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first, in your head, and then you make it real.

I want to keep on living, in any form. I resign my body freely, to the uses of others. They can do what they like with me. I am abject.I feel, for the first time, their true power.

But who can remember pain, once it's over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain

Why don't women have to prove to one another that they are women?

Don’t let the bastards grind you down. I repeat this to myself but it conveys nothing. You might as well say, Don’t let there be air; or, Don’t be.

But what use had that been to her in the past, to be blameless?

But this is wrong, nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from. There's

nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from.

There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There’s something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It’s like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt with. In

If there are sounds coming from inside, we try not to hear them. Nobody's heart is perfect. When

We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices. So

I try to remember if the past was exactly like this. I'm not sure, now. I know it contained these things, but somehow the mix is different. A movie about the past is not the same as the past.

What he wants is intimacy, but I can't give him that.

the nineteenth century: the obsession they had then with harems. Dozens of paintings of harems, fat women lolling on divans, turbans on their heads or velvet caps, being fanned with peacock tails, a eunuch in the background standing guard. Studies of sedentary flesh, painted by men who’d never been there. These pictures were supposed to be erotic, and I thought they were, at the time; but I see now what they were really about. They were paintings about suspended animation; about waiting, about objects not in use. They were paintings about boredom. But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men.   I

Me estiro, pues, dentro de la habitación, bajo el ojo de escayola del techo, detrás de las cortinas blancas, entre las sábanas, y me deslizo dentro de mi propio tiempo, abandonando el ritmo que nos marcan. Aunque esto también forma parte del ritmo, y yo no estoy fuera de él.

Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes. …

We learned to lip-read, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other's mouths. In this way we exchanged names from bed to bed:Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June.

As I have said elsewhere, there was little that was truly original with or indigenous to Gilead: its genius was synthesis.

It’s French, he said. From m’aidez. Help me.

These men, we’ve been told, are like war criminals. It’s no excuse that what they did was legal at the time: their crimes are retroactive. They have committed atrocities and must be made into examples, for the rest. Though this is hardly needed. No woman in her right mind, these days, would seek to prevent a birth, should she be so lucky as to conceive. What

Maybe I don’t really want to know what’s going on. Maybe I’d rather not know. Maybe I couldn’t bear to know.The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge.

Some days I do appreciate things more, eggs, flowers, but then I decide I'm only having an attack of sentimentality, my brain going pastel Technicolor, like the beautiful-sunset greeting cards they used to make so many of in California. High-gloss hearts. The danger is grayout.   I'd

But this is wrong, nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from. There’s

This was something he certainly had not done. I thought he might be toying, some cat-and-mouse routine, but now I think that his motives and desires weren’t obvious even to him. They had not yet reached the level of words.

We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability? It

Better? I say, in a small voice. How can he think this is better? Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.

they sleep, they can be startled, even there in the soothing of the heart, like waves on the shore around them. A

It’s good to have small goals that can be easily attained.

But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No

Humanity is so adaptable, my mother would say. Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. It

who knows what the chances are out there, of survival, yours? I will say, you, you like an old love song. You can mean more than one. You can mean thousands. I am nor in any immediate danger, I'll say to you.I'll pretend you can hear me. but it`s no good because I know you can't.

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We

Nothing takes place in the bed but sleep; or no sleep. I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed. There’s a lot that doesn’t bear thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last.

Live in the present, make the most of it, it's all you've got. Time

I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off. It isn't a story I'm telling.It's also a story I'm telling, in my head, as I go along.Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing is in any case forbidden. But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else.

You can't help what you feel, Moira once said, but you can help how you behave. Which