Quotes from Margaret Atwood

Jane resented him for it, but she didn't blame him. Her mother inspired in almost everyone who encountered her a vicious desire for escape.

As for the adverse publicity, they could squelch it at source, since the media Corps controlled what was news and what wasn't. And the Internet was such a jumble of false and true factoids that no one believed what was on it any more, or else they believed all of it, which amounted to the same thing.

I collected enough fragments of the past to make a reconstruction of it, which must have borne as much relation to the real thing as a mosaic portrait would to the original.

But all my love ever came to was a bad end. Red-hot shoes, barrels studded with nails. That's what it feels like, unrequited love. She had a baby, too. I was never allowed. Everything you ever wanted, I wanted also.

It was what they both wanted: freedom from the world of mothers, the world of precautions, the world of burdens and fate and heavy female constraints upon the flesh. They wanted a life without consequences.

There was a pot of boiling rage on a private stove behind their closed curtains:

Unlike Laura, I have never had the courage of my convictions.

But that's where I am, there's no escaping it. Time's a trap, I'm caught in it. I must forget about my secret name and all ways back. My name is Offred now, and here is where I live.

There were swings in one of the parks, but because of our skirts, which might be blow up by the wind and then looked into, we were not to think of taking such a liberty as a swing. Only boys could taste that freedom; only they could swoop and soar; only they could be airborne.

did I think it would nonetheless be business as usual? Because we'd been hearing these things for so long, I suppose. You don't believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.

Ah the Eternal Stupid Woman! How we enjoy hearing about her: as she listens to the con-artist yarns of the plausible snake, and ends up eating the free sample of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge: thus giving birth to Theology; or as she opens the tricky gift box containing all human evils, but is stupid enough to believe that Hope will be some kind of a solace.

no matter what I do there's something hilarious about it. He wanted me to play Scrabble with him, and kiss him as if I meant it.

Totalitarianisms may crumble from within, as they fail to keep the promises that brought them to power; or they may be attacked from without; or both. There are no sure-fire formulas, since very little in history is inevitable.

I didn't like it when other people criticized Laura - her vagueness, her simplicity, her feckleness. Criticism of Laura was reserved for me.

It's going to be all right, I said, prayed in my head. Oh let it. Let us cross, let us across. Just this once and I'll do anything. What I thought I could do for whoever was listening that would be of the least use or even interest I'll never know.

Girls of that age can be quite sadistic.

She lived with several men, but in each of the apartments there were always cardboard boxes, belonging to her, that she never got around to unpacking; just as well, because it was that much easier to move out. When she got past thirty she decided it might be nice to have a child, some time, later. She tried to figure out a way of doing this without becoming a mother.

So true," said Miss Violence, with a sigh. But she sighed about everything. She fit into Avilion very well – into its obsolete Victorian splendours, its air of aesthetic decay, of departed grace, of wan regret. Her attitudes and even her faded cashmeres went with the wallpaper. Laura

Amazing how quickly the past becomes idyllic. Ivory

Nature may be dumb as a sack of hammers, Zeb used to say, but it's smarter than you.

He's got his cigarette going . He offers her one; this time she takes it. Brief match-flare inside their cupped hands. Red finger-ends.

Now young lady,' he said to me, 'I'm not going to chastize you personally because I can see you are a nice girl and only the innocent means to this abominable end. But you will be so kind as to give these tracts to your employers. Who can tell but that their hearts may yet be softened? The propagation of drink and of drunkenness to excess is an iniquity, a sin against the Lord.

What I think doesn't matter. Which is the only reason he can tell me things.

I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed. There's a lot that doesn't bear thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last.