The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood

Sometimes I wish she would just shut up and let me walk in peace. But I’m ravenous for news, any kind of news; even if it’s false news, it must mean something.

Does he know I’m here, alive, that I’m thinking about him? I have to believe so. In reduced circumstances you have to believe all kinds of things. I believe in thought transference now, vibrations in the ether, that sort of junk. I never used to.

How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation.

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

But I still pretended to myself, then, that we should try to preserve something resembling dignity.