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.

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

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep; in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

What if I were to pray to Aunt Lydia at night, instead of to God? I did try, later in the week. But the idea was too unthinkable—praying to a woman—so I stopped.

one occasion—blissfully—in a cool drizzle. We reeked of wet clothing that night, but less of ourselves.

How tedious is a tyranny in the throes of enactment. It’s always the same plot.

One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others. I was one person: I risked becoming no person.

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.