Book

The Handmaid's Tale

From the bestselling author of Alias Grace and the MaddAddam trilogy, here is the #1 New York Times bestseller and seminal work of speculative fiction from the Booker Prize-winning author. Now a Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss,

(29 total)

Characters

Margaret Atwood (29)

“When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Beautiful, Past, Memories

“But 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.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Pain

“You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Jealousy, Theory

“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Ignorance, Ignoring

“Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Faith, strength, Inspirational

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between stories.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Freedom, Stories

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Journalists, Writers, Authors, Freedom, Stories

“But 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.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Pain, remember, forget

“They only show us victories, never defeats. Who wants bad news? Possibly he's an actor.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Bad News, Defeats, Propaganda

“The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: News, Unreal

“Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it. There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in ditches or the woods, bludgeoned to death or mutilated, interfered with, as they used to say, but they were about other women, and…”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Social Change, Political Injustice, Being Silent

“Careless. I was careless in those rooms. I could lift the telephone and food would appear on a tray, food I had chosen. Food that was bad for me, no doubt, and drink too. There were bibles in the dresser drawers put there by some charitable society, though probably no one read them very much.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: hotel room, hotels, Decadence

“Someone else planted a bomb in her car but it went off too early. Though some people said she'd put the bomb in her own car for sympathy. That's how hot things were getting.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Unrest, Politics

“These men, we've been told, are like war criminals. It's no excuse that what they did was legal at the time, their crimes are retroactive. They have committed atrocities and must be made into examples for the rest. Though this is hardly needed, no woman in her right mind these days would seek to pre…”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Abortion, Criminals, Pro-Choice, Pro-Life

“'Modesty is invisibility,' said Aunt Lydia. 'Never forget it. To be seen, to be SEEN, is to be,' her voice trembled, 'Penetrated. What you must be, girls, is impenetrable.'”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Girls, Women, feminism, Modesty

“I try not to think too much, like other things now, thought must be rationed.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Oppression, Women, Totalitarianism

“You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Behavior, Feelings, Emotion, Psychology, Mental Health

“To want is to have a weakness.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Wanting, Desire, Weakness, Lust

“I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Wanting, Desire, Change, Nostalgia

“I am not your justification for existence.”

— Margaret Atwood, amazon.com

Tagged: Existence, justification, Love, Idealism, Idealizing Someone