The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale, #2)

by Margaret Atwood

Right now I still have some choice in the matter. Not whether to die, but when and how. Isn’t that freedom of a sort?

They said calm things like You need to be strong. They were trying to make things better. But it can put a lot of pressure on a person to be told they need to be strong.

You’d be surprised how quickly the mind goes soggy in the absence of other people. One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others. I was one person: I risked becoming no person.

Reign of terror, they used to say, but terror does not exactly reign. Instead it paralyzes. Hence the unnatural quiet.