Quotes from book
The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, originally published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England, in a totalitarian state resembling a theonomy that overthrows the United States government. The novel focuses on the journey of the handmaid Offred. Her name derives from the possessive form "of Fred"; handmaids are forbidden to use their birth names and must use names derivative of those of the male, or master, whom they serve.

Margaret Atwood photo

“Maybe the life I think I'm living is a paranoid delusion… 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.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“If I thought this would never happen again I would die. But this is wrong, nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“Faith is only a word, embroidered.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“One and one and one and one doesn't equal four. Each one remains unique, there is no way of joining them together. They cannot be exchanged, one for the other. They cannot replace each other.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Chapter 30 (pp. 194-195)
Source: The Handmaid's Tale
Context: (She is reciting the Lord’s prayer) Now we come to forgiveness. Don’t worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe, if they are safe. Don’t let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.

Margaret Atwood photo

“Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“They seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society dying of too much choice.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. The difference betweenand. Lay is always passive.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word. These women could be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Chapter 5 (p. 24)
Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“I tell, therefore you are.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“If you don't like it, change it, we said, to each other and to ourselves. And so we would change for the man, for another one. Change, we were sure, was for the better always. We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“When power is scarce, a little of it is tempting.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood photo

“We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Similar authors

Margaret Atwood photo
Margaret Atwood 348
Canadian writer 1939
Alice Munro photo
Alice Munro 38
Canadian novelist
Saul Bellow photo
Saul Bellow 103
Canadian-born American writer
Jean Vanier photo
Jean Vanier 36
Canadian humanitarian
Brian Tracy photo
Brian Tracy 63
American motivational speaker and writer
Jack Kerouac photo
Jack Kerouac 266
American writer
Julio Cortázar photo
Julio Cortázar 29
Argentinian writer
Luciano De Crescenzo photo
Luciano De Crescenzo 1
Italian writer
Naguib Mahfouz photo
Naguib Mahfouz 7
Egyptian writer
Frank Herbert photo
Frank Herbert 158
American writer