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the ways of God are not the ways of man, and they are most emphatically not the ways of woman.”
It would be a sin to reject what God has provided to his favoured ones through his bounty.”
I have noted since that some kinds of men like to bully beautiful women.
“Prayer is cumulative,” he said. “You’ll come to understand what a lot of reasons you’ll have to give thanks to a power greater than yourselves.
but I had an advantage: I was not blinded by ideology. This would give me a flexibility she lacked, in the long game ahead of us.
Keep steady, I told myself. Don’t share too much about yourself, it will be used against you. Listen carefully. Save all clues. Don’t show fear.
For a time I almost believed what I understood I was supposed to believe. I numbered myself among the faithful for the same reason that many in Gilead did: because it was less dangerous. 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.
Keep your friends close but your enemies closer. Having no friends, I must make do with enemies.
The Aunts had their methods, and their informants: no walls were solid for them, no doors locked.
Where there is an emptiness, the mind will obligingly fill it up. Fear is always at hand to supply any vacancies, as is curiosity.
much latitude is given by those in power to professionals who can relieve them of pain. The doctors, the dentists, the lawyers, the accountants: in the new world of Gilead, as in the old, their sins are frequently forgiven them.
I thought he was only trying to be nice to me, and I resented that. I wanted him to actually mean it.
Reign of terror, they used to say, but terror does not exactly reign. Instead it paralyzes. Hence the unnatural quiet.
The Handmaids are usually so subdued, and the display of so much rage on their part can be alarming.
It was how the Aunts got their power: by finding things out. Things that should never be talked about.
Per Ardua Cum Estrus.
I feared I might lose my faith. If you’ve never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying; that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you’ll be left all alone. You feel exiled, as if you are lost
they want a safe haven, protected from poverty, exploitation, and the depredations of the so-called modern life. They want stability, they want order, they want clear guidelines.
“The more haste, the less speed,”
how easily a hand becomes a fist.
“But many of us would rather not be who we are. We don’t have unlimited choices in that department.
No pain unless necessary, but if necessary, pain.
She who cannot control herself cannot control the path to duty. Do not fight the waves of anger, use the anger as your fuel. Inhale. Exhale. Sidestep. Circumvent. Deflect.
