THE HANDMAIDS TALE QUOTES

"Girls, felt-skirted as I knew from pictures, later in mini-skirts, then pants, then one earring, spiky green-streaked hair." - Chapter 1.

"Yearning for something that was always about to happen, and was never the same as the hands that were on us there and then." - Chapter 1.

"Blessed be the fruit." - Chapter 4.

"The heart of Gilead, where the war cannot intrude except on television." - Chapter 5.

"There is more than one kind of freedom...Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Dont underrate it." - Chapter 5.

"She is a flag on a hilltop, showing what still can be done: we too can be saved." - Chapter 5.

"They are very interested how other households are run; such bits of petty gossip give them an opportunity for pride or discontent." - Chapter 5.

"Nolite te bastardes carborundorum." (Don't let the bastards get you down - Latin.) - Chapter 9.

"We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edge of print. It gave us more freedom." - chapter 10.

"I wait. I compose myself. Myself is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born." - chapter 12.

"I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own."  - Chapter 13.

"Give me children, or else I die. Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? Behold my maid Bilhah. She shall bear fruit upon my knees, that I may also have children by her." - Chapter 15.

"Moira had power now, she'd been set loose, she'd set herself loose. She was now a loose woman." - Chapter 22.

"There is something subversive about this garden of Serena's, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to say: Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard, though silently." - Chapter 25.

"That was one thing they forced you to do. They force you to kill, within yourself." - chapter 30.

"Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse for some."             - Chapter 32.

"There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remained democratic. Everybody shits, as Moira would say." - Chapter 39.

"It makes me feel more in control, as if there is a choice, a desicion that could be made one way or the other." - chapter 41.

"The crimes of others are a secret language among us. Through them we show ourselves what we might be capable of, after all. This is not a popular announcement." - Chapter 42.

"Don't let the bastards grind you down. I repeat this to myself but it conveys nothing. You might as well say, Don't let there be air; or don't be. I suppose you could say that." - chapter 46.