Chapter 24

• “you can think clearly only with your clothes on”
• “What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth (…) Perspective is necessary”
• “Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be.”
• that’s where I am, there’s no escaping it. Time’s a trap, I’m caught in it. I must forget about my secret name and all ways back. My name is Offred now, and here is where I live.
• “the curtains gauzy as a bridal dress, as ectoplasm”
• “Context is all.”
• “If it’s only a story, it becomes less frightening”
• “the mistress had once been very beautiful”
• “The woman said she didn’t notice much that she found unusual. She denied knowing about the ovens.”
• “He was not a monster, she said. People say he was a monster, but he was not one. [...] She was thinking about how not to think."
• “How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation.”
• “All this she would have believe, because otherwise how could she have kept on living?”
• “the laughter boiling like lava in my throat [...] I'll burst. Red all over the cupboard,"
• “It sounds in my head now less like a prayer, more like a command; but to do what? Useless to me in any case, an ancient hieroglyph to which the key’s been lost.”
• Men are sex machines, said Aunt Lydia, and not much more. They only want one thing. You must learn to manipulate them, for your own good.