handmaids

• "The air got too full, once,


  of chemicals, rays, radiation" - Offred
• "When such things


  were legal" - (Talking about the scientists on the Wall)
• "Blessed be the fruit"


  "May the lord open"
• "We lived in the blank white


  spaces at the edges of print" - Offred
• "There is no such thing


  as a sterile man anymore" - Offred
• "A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere,


  as long as it stays inside the maze" - Offred
• "We learned to whisper


  almost without sound" - Offred
• "It's lack of


  love we die from" - Offred
• "Give me kids


  or I die"
• "Two


  Legged womb, sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices" - Offred
• "The spectacles women


  used to make of themselves" - Offred
• "My name isn't Offred, I have another name,


  which nobody uses now because it's forbidden" - Offred
• "It means you


  can't cheat Nature" - The Commander
• "Nature demands variety, for men. It stands to reason,


  it's part of the procreational strategy" - The Commander
• "Many of the Wives have such gardens,


  it's something for them to order and maintain and care for" - Offred
• "Is there no end to

  his disguises, of benevolence?" - (Talking about the Commander)
• "The Commander could give me away so easily,

  by a look, by a gesture" - Offred
• "If it's a story I'm telling,

  then I have control over the ending" - Offred
• "But by that time Janine was like a

  puppy that's been kicked too often" - Offred
• "Something she's won,


  a tribute" - (Talking about the Wife with the new baby)
• "We thought we had such problems.

  How were we to know we were happy?" - Offred
• "that some other human being

  has wished you that much evil." - Offred
• '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.'
• 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.
• I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will . . . Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping.
• He was not a monster, to her. Probably he had some endearing trait: he whistled, offkey, in the shower, he had a yen for truffles, he called his dog Liebchen and made it sit up for little pieces of raw steak. How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation.
• 'The problem wasn’t only with the women, he says. The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them anymore . . . I’m not talking about sex, he says. That was part of it, the sex was too easy . . . You know what they were complaining about the most? Inability to feel. Men were turning off on sex, even. They were turning off on marriage. Do they feel now? I say. Yes, he says, looking at me. They do.'
• “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.”
•  We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. God is love, they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. 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.
• “You can think clearly only with your clothes on.”
• “I feel like the word shatter.”
• “Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.”
• “To want is to have a weakness.”
• “As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.”
• “They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word undone. These women could be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose. ”
• “You can wet the rim of a glass and run your finger around the rim and it will make a sound. This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter. I want to be with someone.”
• "Faith is only a word, embroidered.”
• “I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, than at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish t 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.”
• "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.”