Stay in Gilead long enough and it starts to eat you from the inside out. That’s one of the things they do. They force you to kill, within yourself.
I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there’s nothing I can do to change it. I’ve tried to put some of the good things in as well.[to her baby]
I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.
Every love story is a tragedy if you wait long enough.
You will never be free of me. You will never be free of me until both of my children are safe.[to Serena]
You have to let the rabble-rousers blow off a little steam or they’ll smash everything to bits.
Who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow. Not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.
Whether this is my end or a new beginning, I have no way of knowing. I have given myself over into the hands of strangers. I have no choice. It can’t be helped. And so I step up, into the darkness within or else the light.
There’s a window with white curtains, and the glass is shatterproof. But it isn’t running away they’re afraid of. A Handmaid wouldn’t get far. It’s those other escapes. The ones you can open in yourself given a cutting edge. Or a twisted sheet and a chandelier.
Now, there has to be an “us.” Because, now, there is a “them.”
Nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from.
It’s okay to take a sliver of someone and hold on to that. Especially if it’s all you have.
