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• 19

  The Handmaids get picked up in the red Birthmobile.
• 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.
• In reduced circumstances the desire to live attaches itself to strange objects. I would like a pet: a bird, say, or a cat. A familiar. Anything at all familiar.
• They could tell once, with machines, but that is now outlawed. What would be the point of knowing, anyway? You can’t have them taken out; whatever it is must be carried to term.

  The chances are four in one, we learned that at the Centre. 

  The air got too full, once, of chemicals, rays, radiation, the water swarmed with toxic molecules, all of that takes years to clean up, and meanwhile they creep into your body, camp out in your fatty cells.
• We didn’t know exactly what would happen to the babies that didn’t get passed, they were declared Unbabies. But we knew they were put somewhere, quickly, away.
• A thing is valued, she says, only if it is rare and hard to get. We want you to be valued, girls.
• Once they drugged women, induced labour, cut them open, sewed them up. No more. No anaesthetics, even. Aunt Elizabeth said it was better for the baby