Reader > Reader's Quotes

“Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. God is love, they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh.

And sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends had been evasive about it, at the time.

There is a good deal of comfort, now, in remembering this.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“I am not your justification for existence.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“We lived, as usual by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“One and one and one and one doesn't equal four. Each one remains unique, there is no way of joining them together. They cannot be exchanged, one for the other. They cannot replace each other.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Sometimes she would cry. I was so lonely, she'd say. You have no idea how lonely I was. And I had friends, I was a lucky one, but I was lonely anyway.

I admired my mother in some ways, although things between us were never easy. She expected too much from me, I felt. She expected me to vindicate her life for her, and the choices she'd made. I didn't want to live my life on her terms. I didn't want to be the model offspring, the incarnation of her ideas. We used to fight about that. I am not your justification for existence, I said her to once.
I want her back. I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?”
― Margaret atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“They seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society dying of too much choice.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“He stops, looks up at this window, and I can see the white oblong of his face. We look at each other. I have no rose to toss, he has no lute. But it's the same kind of hunger. ”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Is that how we lived, then? But we lived as usual. Everyone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual. Even this is as usual, now.

We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil. It was like being in an elevator cut loose at the top. Falling, falling, and not knowing when you will hit.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“I wish I was ignorant, so I didn't know how ignorant I am”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale