Quotes from book

The Handmaid's Tale

“I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name; remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me. I want to steal something.”

“I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light.”

“One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope.

In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive?”

“Every night when I go to bed I think, In the morning I will wake up in my own house and things will be back the way they were.
It hasn’t happened this morning, either.”

“How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word.”

“Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.”

“Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.”

“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.”

“But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.”

“It's his word against the Commander's, unless he wants to head a posse. Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words.”

“All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.”

“Modesty is invisibility… Never forget it. To be seen—to be—is to be… penetrated. What you must be girls, is impenetrable.”