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

by Margaret Atwood

Aunt Vidala said that best friends led to whispering and plotting and keeping secrets, and plotting and secrets led to disobedience to God, and disobedience led to rebellion, and girls who were rebellious became women who were rebellious, and a rebellious woman was even worse than a rebellious man because rebellious men became traitors, but rebellious women became adulteresses.

The flame of my life is subsiding, more slowly than some of those around me might like, but faster than they may realize.

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?

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one most travelled by. It was littered with corpses, as such roads are. But as you will have noticed, my own corpse is not among them.

You don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.

Being able to read and write did not provide the answers to all questions. It led to other questions, and then to others.

The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it.