“That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.”

— Margaret Atwood, book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Chapter 30 (pp. 192-193)
Source: The Handmaid's Tale
Context: I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first, in your head, and then you make it real.

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Margaret Atwood348

Canadian writer 1939

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