The Handmaid's Tale Quotes - Page 19 | Just Great DataBase

But there is no point to it, this wanting.

Don’t let the bastards grind you down.’ I

I feel like cotton candy: sugar and air. Squeeze me and I’d turn into a small sickly damp wad of weeping pinky-red. I

To have them sizing him up. To have them thinking, He can’t do it, he won’t do, he’ll have to do, this last as if he were a garment, out of style or shoddy, which must nevertheless be put on because there’s nothing else available. To

Maybe they have all vanished, the women she knew. Or maybe she doesn't want to be seen. She stands in silence, head down. As

I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it.

The life of the moon may not be on the surface, but inside. The

From the point of view of future history, this kind, we'll be invisible.

Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in ditches or the woods, bludgeoned to death or mutilated, interfered with as they used to say, but they were about other women, and then men who did such things were other men. None of them were the men we knew. The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension our lives. We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the black white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.

Vai correr tudo bem, eu disse, supliquei em minha cabeça. Ah, permita que sim. Permita que atravessemos. Só desta vez e eu farei qualquer coisa. O que pensei que pudesse fazer por quem quer que estivesse ouvindo aquilo que fosse de alguma utilidade ou sequer de algum interesse jamais saberei

The egg is glowing now, as if it had an energy of its own. To look at the egg gives me intense pleasure. The

so sinful, so free. Freedom, like everything else, is relative.

Trust me, he says; which in itself has never been a talisman, carries no guarantee.

Do you know what it came from? said Luke. Mayday? No, I said. It’s a strange word to use for that, isn’t it? Newspapers and coffee, on Sunday mornings, before she was born. There were still newspapers, then. We used to read them in bed. It’s French, he said. From m’aidez. Help me.   Coming

I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it's shameful or immodest but because I don't want to see it. I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely.

God, do I need a cigarette, says Moira. Me too, I say. I feel ridiculously happy.

Mother, I think. Wherever you may be. Can you hear me? You wanted a women's culture. Well, now there is one. It isn't what you meant, but it exists. Be thankful for small mercies.

She expected me to vindicate her life for her, and the choices she'd made. I didn't want to live my life on her terms.

She's a flag on a hilltop, showing us what can still be done: we too can be saved. The

They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.

To such devices have we descended.

We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

sometimes, along these

What we prayed for was emptiness, so we would be worthy to be filled: with grace, with love, with self-denial, semen and babies. Oh God, King of the universe, thank you for not creating me a man. Oh God, obliterate me. Make me fruitful. Mortify my flesh, that I may be multiplied. Let me be fulfilled... Some

The sun goes and the egg fades. I

The Commander puts his hand to his head. What have I been saying, and to whom, and which one of his enemies has found out? Possibly he will be a security risk, now. I am above him, looking down; he is shrinking. There have already been purges among them, there will be more. Serena Joy goes white. "Bitch," she says. "After all he did for you." Cora and Rita press through from the kitchen. Cora has begun to cry. I was her hope, I've failed her. Now she will always be childless. The van waits in the driveway, its double doors stand open. The two of them, one on either side now, take me by the elbows to help me in. Whether this is my end or a new beginning I have no way of knowing: I have given myself over into the hands of strangers, because it can't be helped. And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.

Only some, mind you, she said coyly, raising her index finger, waggling it at us. But they were Godless, and that can make all the difference, don't you agree? I

The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil. It

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

The news paper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives.

There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democratic. Everybody shits, as Moira would say.

But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All

Wir glaubten, wir hätten furchtbare Probleme. Wie sollten wir wissen, daß wir glücklich waren?

The things I believe can't all be true, though one of them must be. I believe in all of them (...). This contradictory way of believing seems to me, right now, the only way I can believe anything. Whatever the truth is, I will be ready for it. This also is a belief of mine. This also may be untrue.

But if you happen to be a man, sometime in the future, and you've made it this far, please remember: you will never be subject to the temptation or feeling you must forgive, a man, as a woman. It's difficult to resist, believe me. But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.

Nessas ocasiões leio depressa, vorazmente, quase saltando trechos, tentando botar o máximo possível dentro de minha cabeça antes do próximo longo período de fome. Se estivéssemos comendo seria a glutonaria dos famintos, se fosse sexo seria uma trepada rápida de pé em um beco em algum lugar.

I didn't want to be the model offspring, the incarnation of her ideas.

May the Lord open, Janine would have replied, tonelessly, in her transparent voice, her voice of raw egg white.

I could just sit here, peacefully. I could withdraw. It’s possible to go so far in, so far down and back, they could never get you out.

There are a great many buttocks in this room. I am no longer used to them.

A thing is valued, she says, only if it is rare and hard to get. We want you to be valued, girls. Think of yourselves as pearls. We, sitting in our rows, eyes down, we make her salivate morally. We are hers to define, we must suffer her adjectives.

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There

Dutzende von Haremsgemälden, dicke Frauen, die sich auf Diwanen räkeln, mit Turbanen auf dem Kopf oder Samtkappen; sie wurden mit Pfauenfedern gefächelt, während ein Eunuch im Hintergrund Wache stand. Studien sitzenden Fleisches, von Männern gemalt, die nie im Orient gewesen waren. Solche Bilder galten als erotisch, und ich dachte damals auch, daß sie es seien; doch jetzt verstehe ich, worum es auf diesen Bildern wirklich ging. Es waren Gemälde über das aufgeschobene Leben, über das Warten, über Gegenstände, die nicht in Gebrauch waren. Es waren Gemälde über die Langeweile.Aber vielleicht ist Langeweile erotisch - wenn Frauen sich langweilen - für Männer.

There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.

no empire imposed by force or otherwise has ever been without this feature: control of the indigenous by members of their own group.

I’ll have to bring another one, she said. Such a waste. What was you doing on the floor like that? She

Something could be exchanged, we thought, some deal made, some tradeoff, we still had our bodies.

if it never happened to you, not ever, you would be like a mutant, a creature from outer space. Everyone knew that.

This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.

Fraternize means to behave like a brother. Luke told me that. He said there was no corresponding word that meant to behave like a sister. Sororize, it would have to be, he said. From