“Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.”
Work
The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England, in a strongly patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state, known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. The central character and narrator is a woman named Offred, one of the group known as "handmaids", who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "commanders" — the ruling class of men in Gilead. The novel explores themes of subjugated women in a patriarchal society, loss of female agency and individuality, and the various means by which they resist and attempt to gain individuality and independence. The Handmaid's Tale won the 1985 Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987; it was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award. ---------- Also contained in: [Novels](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24301311W)
Quotes
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Margaret Atwood
Canonical work source
“Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.”
“Don't let the bastards grind you down.”
“By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore yo...”
“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
“It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nua...”
“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. G...”
“Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered.”
“The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge.”
“To feel that empty, again, again. I listen to my heart, wave upon wave, salty and red, continuing on and on, marking time.”
“If you worked out enough, maybe the man would too. Maybe you would be able to work it out together, as if the two of you were a puzzle that could be solved; otherwise, one of you, most likel...”
“We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?”
“Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.”
“You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.”
“Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you.”
“One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope. In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the co...”
“Maybe I don’t really want to know what’s going on. Maybe I’d rather not know. Maybe I couldn’t bear to know. The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge.”