The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood

if it’s a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don’t tell a story only to yourself. There’s always someone else.

We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print.

Household: that is what we are. The Commander is the head of the household. The house is what he holds. To have and to hold, till death do us part. The hold of a ship. Hollow.

I’m dreaming that I am awake.

we never do dream of being asleep, so it seems.

Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.

A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.

remnants of some lost intention, like signs on a road that turns out to lead nowhere.

And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.