The Handmaids Tale

• Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.
• Better never means better for everyone... it always means worse, for some
• A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.
• 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.
• Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.
• When we think of the past its the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.
• I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or as a means of transportation, or an implement for te acomplishement of my will... Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I am a cloud congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping.
• We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?
• I would like to believe this is a story I am 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 is a story I am 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.
• Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.
• But who can remeber pain once its 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.