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

by Margaret Atwood

but pocket the oranges. Oranges are so refreshing.

there is too much of wrong in it, too much that is false, and too much that is surely contrary to what God intended—but you must permit me some space to mourn the good that will be lost.

we were precious flowers that had to be kept safely inside glass houses, or else we would be ambushed and our petals would be torn off and our treasure would be stolen and we would be ripped apart and trampled by the ravenous men who might lurk around any corner, out there in the wide sharp-edged sin-ridden world.

I had no faith in the wise choices of the Aunts: I feared that I would end up married to a goat on fire. —

These kids could hardly burp without some adult pointing a camera at them and telling them to do it again—as if they lived their lives twice, once in reality and the second time for the photo.

Melanie told me that all the early pictures of me had been burnt up in a fire. Only an idiot would have believed this, so I did.

But then Neil and Melanie said I couldn’t go.

Shes baby nicole?? Mayb

I didn’t love the Wyle School, but I didn’t hate it either. It was something to get through on my way to real life,

Why 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.

if you aren’t looking, you don’t see.”

Did I weep? Yes: tears came out of my two visible eyes, my moist weeping human eyes. But I had a third eye, in the middle of my forehead. I could feel it: it was cold, like a stone. It did not weep: it saw. And behind it someone was thinking: I will get you back for this. I don’t care how long it takes or how much shit I have to eat in the meantime, but I will do it.

am allowed to hope, surely. It’s not yet the midnight of my life; the bell has not yet tolled, and Mephistopheles has not yet turned up to collect the price I must pay for our bargain.

What good is it to throw yourself in front of a steamroller out of moral principles and then be crushed flat like a sock emptied of its foot? Better to fade into the crowd, the piously praising, unctuous, hate-mongering crowd. Better to hurl rocks than to have them hurled at you. Or better for your chances of staying alive.

“Wait long enough and you won’t be disappointed,” said Ada. “Something will happen. Only you might not like what it is.”

I used to ask myself whether I was Fox or Cat. Should I twist and turn, using the secrets in my possession to manipulate others, or should I zip my lip and rejoice as others outsmarted themselves? Obviously I was both, since—unlike many—here I still am. I still have a bag of tricks. And I’m still high in the tree.

No pain unless necessary, but if necessary, pain.