The Handmaid's Tale Quotes - Page 20 | Just Great DataBase

It’s going to be all right, I said, prayed in my head. Oh let it. Let us cross, let us across. Just this once and I’ll do anything. What I thought I could do for whoever was listening that would be of the least use or even interest I’ll never know.

For the ones who come after you, it will be easier. They will accept their duties with willing hearts. She did not say: Because they will have no memories, of any other way.She said: Because they won't want things they can't have.

Be thankful for small mercies.

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.

to institute an effective totalitarian system or indeed any system at all you must offer some benefits and freedoms, at least to a privileged few, in return for those you remove. In

I'm entitled, she'd say. I'm old enough, I've paid my dues, it's time for me to be quaint. You're still wet behind the ears. Piglet, I should have said. As

here’s the crowning, the glory, the head, purple and smeared with yoghurt, another push and it slithers out, slick with fluid and blood, into our waiting. Oh

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 the Latin. He

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. So that’s how they do it, I thought. I seemed never to have known that before.

On these occasions I read quickly, voraciously, almost skimming, trying to get as much into my head as possible before the next long starvation. If it were eating it would be the gluttony of the famished; if it were sex it would be a swift furtive stand-up in an alley somewhere. While

You young people don't appreciate things, she'd say. You don't know what we had to go through, just to get you where you are.

when I was still imaginary for him. Before we were married and I solidified.

This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter. I want to be with someone.   Lying

Soothing to the eye, the eyes, the Eyes, for that's who this show is for. We're

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

They'd peck themselves to death, rather than quit. Who knew what worked? I

There is a silence. But sometimes it's as dangerous not to speak. "Yes,

What I think doesn't matter. Which is the only reason he can tell me things.

In reduced circumstances you have to believe all kinds of things. I believe in thought transference now, vibrations in the ether, that sort of junk. I never used to.

I want her back. I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.

Maybe night falls because it's heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes.

Das Wohnzimmer ist kultiviert, symmetrisch; es ist eine der Formen, die Geld annimmt, wenn es erstarrt. Geld ist jahrelang durch dieses Zimmer geflossen, wie durch eine unterirdische Höhle. Es hat sich verkrustet und zu diesen Formen verhärtet, die an Stalaktiten erinnern.

My name isn't Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it's forbidden. I tell myself it doesn't matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others;

But now I think that the rest also was practice. They were giving us a chance to get used to blank time. A

What could she have been thinking about? Not much, I guess; not back then, not at the time. She was thinking about how not to think. The times were abnormal. She

The things I believe can't all be true, though one of them must be. But I believe all of them, all three versions of Luke, at once and the same time. 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.

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets.

They have no outlets now except themselves, and that's a sacrilege. There

can this

But who can remember pain, one it's over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

I marvel again at the nakedness of men's lives: the showers right out in the open, the body exposed for inspection and comparison, the public display of privates. What is it for? What purposes of reassurance does it serve? The flashing of a badge, look, everyone, all is in order, I belong here. Why don't women have to prove to one another that they are women? Some form of unbuttoning, some split-crotch routine, just as casual. A doglike sniffing. The

To such devices have we descended.   Buttered,

A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the center of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier, once. They’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to. A

Luke knelt beside me and put his arms around me. I heard, he said, on the car radio, driving home. Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s temporary.

We hold our breath as Aunt Elizabeth inspects it: a girl, poor thing, but so far so good (...).

Not knowing makes it worse. I

Tal vez la vida que yo creo vivir es una ilusión paranoica.

Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.   I

There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about

Not a dandelion in sight here, the lawns are picked clean. I long for one, just one, rubbishy and insolently random and hard to get rid of and perennially yellow as the sun. Cheerful and plebeian, shining for all alike. Rings, we would make from them, and crowns and necklaces, stains from the bitter milk on our fingers. Or I'd hold one under her chin: Do you like butter? Smelling them, she'd get pollen on her nose. Or was that buttercups? Or gone to seed: I can see her, running across the lawn, that lawn there just in front of me, at two, three years old, waving one like a sparkler, a small wand of white fire, the air filling with tiny parachutes. Blow, and you tell the time. All that time, blowing away in the summer breeze. It was daisies for love though, and we did that too. ***

For the ones who come after you, it will be easier. They will accept their duties with willing hearts. She did not say: Because they will have no memories, of any other way. She said: Because they won't want things they can't have.

En un día como éste, podemos hacer lo que queremos. Rectifico: dentro de ciertos límites

Each thing is valid and really there. It is through a field of such valid objects that I must pick my way, every day and in every way. I put a lot of effort into making such distinctions.

No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do badly by one another, we did as well as most.

Pen Is Envy, Aunt Lydia would say, quoting another Center motto, warning us away from such objects. And they were right, it is envy. Just holding it is envy. I envy the Commander his pen. It's one more thing I would like to steal. The

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. So that's how they do it, I thought. I seemed never to have known that before. Luke

The difference between lie and lay. Lay is always passive. Even men used to say, I'd like to get laid.

So now that we don't have different clothes," I say, "you merely have different women," This is irony, but he doesn't acknowledge it.

To go through all that and give birth to a shredder: it wasn't a fine thought. We didn't know exactly what would happen to the babies that didn't get passed, that were declared Unbabies. But we knew they were put somewhere, quickly, away.

We hugged her to us, she was with us in secret, a giggle; she was lava beneath the crust of daily life.