Handmaid S Tale Quotes & Sayings

After all, nothing helps to write lyrics more than to mess around with the language. — Joshua Homme

The tulips along the border are redder than ever, opening, no longer wine cups but chalices; thrusting themselves up, to what end? They are, after all, empty. When they are old they turn themselves inside out, explode slowly, the petals thrown like shards. — Margaret Atwood

I was nervous. How was I to know he loved me? It might be just an affair. Why did we ever say just? Though at that time men and women tried each other on, casually, like suits, rejecting whatever did not fit. — Margaret Atwood

I find the entrance to the women's washroom ... There's a rest area, gently lit in pinkish tones, with several easy chairs and a sofa, in a lime-green bamboo-shoot print, with a wall clock above it in a gold filigree frame. Here they haven't removed the mirror, there's a long one opposite the sofa. You need to know, here, what you look like. — Margaret Atwood

Dan didn't know how violently he was biting. Just the absolute closeness. Once upon a time he'd hated that body, smashed it, kicked it, beat it into a bleeding pulp, but now he wanted to crawl into it, or kill it, and maim it, to possess it, eat, tear, destroy it, to take it and never leave it again.
His. The body was his, the man was his. His, his, his alone! — Marquesate

The thing to remember is that there is nothing new about the society depicted in The Handmaid's Tale except the time and place. All of the things I have written about have been done before, more than once. — Margaret Atwood

You might prove doctrine from the Bible till doomsday, and it would merely convince a people, but would not convert them. You might read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations, and prove every iota that you advance, and that alone would have no converting influence upon the people. Nothing short of a testimony by the power of the Holy Ghost would bring light and knowledge to them
bring them in their hearts to repentance. Nothing short of that would ever do. — Brigham Young

I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent. — George Washington

My English teachers gave me a copy of Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' when I left high school, which has always been very special to me - it was the novel that introduced me to dystopian fiction. I'm also influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Dickens, John Wyndham and Middle English dream-visions. — Samantha Shannon

You cannot enjoy others until you
enjoy yourself because you cannot give to others what you do not have. — John C. Maxwell

Clover was on the verge of tears but fought hard to keep them back. Never let them see you cry. Any sign of weakness put them into a feeding frenzy. — Shaunta Grimes

I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name; remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me. I want to steal something. — Margaret Atwood

The society in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under Perry Miller, to whom the book is dedicated. — Margaret Atwood

January took a breath, realizing it had been a cause from her holding it in, trying to work through the puzzle she faced. If he's a Ghost, why was she sent on a mission to kill him? — Samantha LaFantasie

I was not really aware of the dystopian genre before I read 'The Handmaid's Tale.' Many poets as well, like John Donne and Emily Dickinson, would be the influences; I specialized in Emily Dickinson at university. Both of those poets have really interesting ways of looking at life and death. — Samantha Shannon

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. — Margaret Atwood

How were we to know we were happy? — Margaret Atwood

You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting. — Margaret Atwood

So I guess you've converted him through the power of your naughtiness and flexibility. What are you going to do with him? "Shut up," I hissed. — Seanan McGuire

I like science fiction. Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick and Vonnegut, and I really like Margaret Atwood, 'The Handmaid's Tale.' And you know, so much of science fiction has to do with predicting what's to come, so I think that's really interesting. — Conor Oberst

You might want to decide fast. We live in a dangerous world. If you see a chance to be happy, you have to fight for it, so later you have no regrets. — Ilona Andrews

Happiness is a long walk with a putter. — Greg Norman

Grown-ups desperately need to feel safe, and then they project onto the kids. But what none of us seem to realize is how smart kids are. They don't like what we write for them, what we dish up for them, because it's vapid, so they'll go for the hard words, they'll go for the hard concepts, they'll go for the stuff where they can learn something. Not didactic things, but passionate things. — Maurice Sendak

I can already feel myself falling hard, something I've been known to do. All because she smiled at me. — Jennifer Niven

I would like to believe this is a story I'm telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off. — Margaret Atwood

You can't live the rest of your days feeling bitter and spiteful," David continued. "It'll eat you up inside and keep you from enjoying the good things that will come your way later on. And there will be good things, I promise you that. — Julianne MacLean

On the top of my desk there are initials, carved into the wood, and dates ... This carving, done with a pencil dug many times into the warn varnish of the desk, has the pathos of all vanished civilizations. It's like a handprint on stone. Whoever made this was once alive. — Margaret Atwood

When you miss the target, never in history has it been the target's fault. Ya gotta take responsibility! — Larry Winget

The way love feels is always only approximate. 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. — Margaret Atwood

I want anything that breaks the monotony, subverts the perceived respectable order of things. — Margaret Atwood

I feel there's a lot of anti-Israel sentiment in the world and a lot of ignorance about what Israel is and does. But it's not for me to speak on Israel's behalf. — Matisyahu