Quotes Flashcards
(198 cards)
1
Q
“A palimpsest of unheard sound”
A
Chapter 1
2
Q
“There was old sex in the room and loneliness”
A
Chapter 1
3
Q
“We yearned for the future”
A
Chapter 1
4
Q
“We still had our bodies”
A
Chapter 1
5
Q
“We learned to whisper almost without sound”
A
Chapter 1
6
Q
“Alma.Janine.Dolores.Moira.June”
A
Chapter 1
7
Q
“They’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to”
A
Chapter 2
8
Q
“I try not to think too much”
A
Chapter 2
9
Q
“For ladies in reduced circumstances. For that is what we are now. The circumstances have been reduced; for those of us who still have circumstances”
A
Chapter 2
10
Q
“How I used to despise such talk. Now I long for it
A
Chapter 2
11
Q
“I hunger to commit the act of touch”
A
Chapter 2
“Commit” emphasises that it is a crime, hunger convays her desire, shows she has levels of rebellion
12
Q
“From a distance, it looks like peace”
A
Chapter 3
Context - publics blindness to issues when they are not affected
13
Q
“I once had a garden”
A
Chapter 3
“garden” symbol of life, fertility and growth - she once had a child?
14
Q
“I’m a reproach to her; and a necessity”
A
Chapter 3
juxtapostition emphasises the paradoxial nature of society
15
Q
“They can hit us, there’s Scriptural precedent”
A
Chapter 3
16
Q
“Perhaps he is an eye”
A
Chapter 4
17
Q
‘I stand on the corner, pretending I am a tree.’
A
Chapter 4
18
Q
“Think of yourselves as seeds”
A
Chapter 4
19
Q
“She is my spy, as I am hers”
A
Chapter 4
20
Q
“I’m ravenous for news, any kind of news; even if it is false news”
A
Chapter 4
21
Q
“Such moments are possibilities, tiny peepholes”
A
Chapter 4
22
Q
“My red shroud”
A
Chapter 4
23
Q
“I find I am not ashamed after all. I enjoy the power”
A
Chapter 4
24
Q
“Doubled, I walk the street”
A
Chapter 5
25
"Freedom to and freedom from"
Chapter 5
26
"We were a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice"
Chapter 5
27
"She's a magic presence to us, an object of envy and desire, we covet her"
Chapter 5
28
"We are fascinated, but also repelled. They seem undressed. It has taken so little time to change our minds, about things like this"
Chapter 5
29
"The heads are zeros"
Chapter 6
30
"These bodies hanging on the Wall are time travellers, anachronisms. They've come here from the past"
Chapter 6
31
"What I feel towards them is blankness. What I feel is that I must not feel. What I feel is partly relief, because none of these men is Luke. Luke wasn't a doctor. Isn't."
Chapter 6
32
"The night is mine, my own time"
Chapter 7
33
"The difference between lie and lay. Lay is always so passive"
Chapter 7
34
"I would like to believe this is a story I am telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it"
Chapter 7
35
"If it is a story I am telling, then I have control over the ending"
Chapter 7
36
"It's a beautiful Mayday"
Chapter 8
37
"She's like my own reflection in a mirror from which I am moving away"
Chapter 8
38
"All flesh is weak"
Chapter 8
39
"She has become speechless"
Chapter 8
40
"Was he is my room? I called it mine"
Chapter 8
41
"My room then. There has to be some space, finally, that I claim as mine, even in this time"
Chapter 9
42
"Nolite te bastardes carborundorum"
Chapter 9
43
"What you don't know won't hurt you, was all she would say"
Chapter 9
44
"The spectacles women used to make of themselves"
Chapter 10
45
"We lived in the blank white spaces at the edge of the print"
Chapter 10
46
'We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces on the edge of the print.'
Chapter 10
47
"I ought to feel hatred for this man. I know I ought to feel it, but it isn"t what I feel"
Chapter 10
48
"FAITH. It is the only thing they have given me to read"
Chapter 10
49
"It intersects me...he deals only with a torso"
Chapter 11
50
"He's said a forbidden word. Sterile".
Chapter 11
51
"No such thing as a sterile man"
Chapter 11
52
"He could ... report me"
Chapter 11
53
"Give me children or else I die"
Chapter 11
54
“Blessed are the meek. She didn't go on to say anything about inheriting the earth.”
Chapter 12
55
“I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose.”
Chapter 12
56
"These pictures [of nineteenth-century harems] were supposed to be erotic... they were paintings about suspended animation; about waiting, about objects not in use. They were paintings about boredom. But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men"
Chapter 13
57
"Behind my closed eyes thin white dancers flit gracefully among the trees, their legs fluttering like the wings of held birds".
Chapter 13
58
“This is a loony bin, Moira said”
Chapter 13
59
Janine … gang-raped... whose fault …?
Chapter 13
60
"I'm running, with her, holding her hand"
Chapter 13
61
"I don't sit, but take my place, kneeling, near the chair with the footstool where Serena Joy will shortly enthrone herself"
Chapter 14
62
"As if I’m a piece of furniture"
Chapter 14
63
“Household: that is what we are. The Commander is the head of the household. The house is what he holds. To have and to hold, till death do us part.”
Chapter 14
64
“He's so close that the tip of his boot is touching my foot"
Chapter 14
65
“They only show us victories, never defeats.”
Chapter 14
66
“Who knows if any of it is true? It could be old clips, it could be faked.”
Chapter 14
67
"An incendiary device"
Chapter 15
68
"Still, it must be hell, to be a man, like that. It must be just fine. It must be hell. It must be very silent.”
Chapter 15
69
“Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the silent. I knew they made that up, I knew it was wrong, and they left things out too.”
Chapter 15
70
"For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth"
Chapter 15
71
“The rings of her left hand cut into my fingers. It may or may not be revenge.”
Chapter 16
72
“Below the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I do not say making love, because it is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate.”
Chapter 16
73
"This is not recreation"
Chapter 16
74
"An improvement on the previous one, who smelled"
Chapter 16
75
“Which of us is it worse for, her or me?”
Chapter 16
76
“I rub the butter over my face; work it into the skin of my hands”
Chapter 17
77
I want to be held and told my name"
Chapter 17
78
I want to steal something"
Chapter 17
79
"Were mirrors"
Chapter 17
80
“But this is wrong, nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from.”
Chapter 18
81
“One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass and the words: In Hope.”
Chapter 18
82
“Under the skirt is the second egg, being kept warm … I think that this is what God must look like: an egg.”
Chapter 19
83
“Pleasure is an egg.”
Chapter 19
84
“If I have an egg, what more can I want?”
Chapter 19
85
"Can't have them taken out"
Chapter 19
86
“The air got too full, once, of chemicals, rays, radiation, the water swamped with toxic molecules.”
Chapter 19
87
"Sacrifices … men revile you"
Chapter 20
88
"That was what they thought of women, then.”
Chapter 20
89
"A man is just a woman’s strategy for making other women"
Chapter 20
90
“Mother, I think. Wherever you may be. Can you hear me? You wanted a women's culture. Well, now there is one. It isn't what you meant, but it exists. Be thankful for small mercies.”
Chapter 21
91
"A different story, a better one"
Chapter 22
92
"The Aunts are allowed to read and write"
Chapter 22
93
"A loose woman"
Chapter 22
94
“The audacity is what we liked”
Chapter 22
95
“This is a reconstruction. All of this is a reconstruction.”
Chapter 23
96
"Two-legged wombs"
Chapter 23
97
"Scrabble ... forbidden"
Chapter 23
98
Larynx ... Valance ... Quince ... Zygote"
Chapter 23
99
“I must forget about my secret name. My name is Offred now, and here is where I live.”
Chapter 24
100
“Context is all”
Chapter 24
101
“How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all"
Chapter 24
102
"The sound of my own heart, ... opening"
Chapter 24
103
"...Egg, which could not be salvaged"
Chapter 25
104
"Snipping off the seed pods ... the swelling genitalia of the flowers"
Chapter 25
105
"There is something subversive about this garden of Serena's”
Chapter 25
106
"Saint Serena, on her knees, doing penance"
Chapter 25
107
"My tongue felt thick"
Chapter 25
108
"For him, I am only a whim"
Chapter 25
109
"I also felt guilty about her. I felt I was an intruder, in a territory that ought to have been hers.”
Chapter 26
110
"From the way I was speaking to him"
Chapter 26
111
"To him I am not merely empty"
Chapter 26
112
"Loaves and Fishes"
Chapter 27
113
'A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.'
Chapter 27
114
"Siamese twins"
Chapter 27
115
"Now it's treason"
Chapter 27
116
"Vanities... shut down"
Chapter 27
117
There's an us then, there's a we"
Chapter 27
118
"Hope is rising in me, like sap in a tree"
Chapter 27
119
“If Moira thought she could create Utopia by shutting herself up in a women-only enclave she was sadly mistaken. Men were not just going to go away, I said. You couldn't just ignore them.”
Chapter 28
120
'We are not each other's, any more. Instead, I am his.'
Chapter 28
121
“Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control"
Chapter 28
122
Having a job ... do a jobbie ... the Book of Job"
Chapter 28
123
I wanted from her a life more ceremonious"
Chapter 28
124
"Instead, I am his"
Chapter 28
125
"My red shoes are off"
Chapter 29
126
"Pen Is Envy"
Chapter 29
127
'Women can't add [...] For them, one and one and one and one don't make four.'
Chapter 29
128
If your dog dies, get another"
Chapter 29
129
"One and one and one and one doesn't equal four. Each one remains unique"
Chapter 30
130
'That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.'
Chapter 30
131
"They force you to kill, within yourself"
Chapter 30
132
"The Eyes of God run all over the earth"
Chapter 30
133
"Hell we can make for ourselves"
Chapter 30
134
"Deliver us from evil"
Chapter 30
135
"Jezebel's"
Chapter 31
136
"September First will be Labour Day"
Chapter 31
137
"They'd throw buns at her"
Chapter 31
138
"Something chokes in my throat"
Chapter 31
139
"He's way up there"
Chapter 32
140
"What I think doesn't matter"
Chapter 32
141
"Better never means better for everyone"
Chapter 32
142
"The Prayvaganza"
Chapter 33
143
"God is a National Resource"
Chapter 33
144
"Kneeling … on the cement floor"
Chapter 33
145
"Hard not to be impressed, but I make an effort"
Chapter 34
146
There is a Balm in Gilead"
Chapter 34
147
"There is a bomb in Gilead"
Chapter 34
148
"What did we overlook? Love, I said"
Chapter 34
149
"Just don't move"
Chapter 34
150
"Something powerful in the whispering of obscenities"
Chapter 34
151
"An invalid … no valid passport"
Chapter 35
152
"I don't want to be telling this story"
Chapter 35
153
Why fight? ... That will never do"
Chapter 35
154
"Is, I say. Is, is"
Chapter 35
155
"I am a blank here, between parentheses"
Chapter 35
156
"A handful of feathers … cups … covered in purple sequins"
Chapter 36
157
"Freedom … is relative"
Chapter 36
158
"He slips around my wrist a tag … ‘an evening rental'"
Chapter 36
159
"I've been here before, with Luke, in the afternoons"
Chapter 37
160
"It's a juvenile display"
Chapter 37
161
"They prefer it ... to the alternatives"
Chapter 37
162
"Haven't removed the mirror"
Chapter 38
163
"Quaker"
Chapter 38
164
"The other Colonies are the worst … radiation spills"
Chapter 38
165
"Indifference, a lack of volition... I don't want her to be like me"
Chapter 38
166
"The drapes are the same"
Chapter 39
167
"Serena wants me serviced"
Chapter 39
168
"I lie there like a dead bird... I can't afford pride or aversion"
Chapter 39
169
"Myself, my obverse"
Chapter 40
170
"I'm alive in my skin"
Chapter 40
171
"Some acknowledgement that he too is human"
Chapter 40
172
"It didn't happen that way either"
Chapter 40
173
"Salvaging"
Chapter 41
174
"I tell, therefore you are"
Chapter 41
175
"So I will myself to go on"
Chapter 41
176
"I tell him my real name and feel that therefore I am known"
Chapter 41
177
"I no longer want to leave, escape, cross the border to freedom"
Chapter 41
178
"The bell is tolling"
Chapter 42
179
"I don't want to be telling this story"
Chapter 42
180
"The same platitudes, the same phrases, the same slogans"
Chapter 42
181
"As if she's being helped up the steps of a bus... the noose... like a vestment"
Chapter 42
182
"I want to tear, gouge, rend"
Chapter 43
183
"It isn't Luke. But it could have been"
Chapter 43
184
"He has become an it"
Chapter 43
185
"She isn't Ofglen ... I am Ofglen"
Chapter 44
186
"May the Lord open ... Which I receive with joy"
Chapter 44
187
"ll say anything they like, I'll incriminate anyone"
Chapter 44
188
"She has died that I may live ... Unless this woman is lying"
Chapter 45
189
“I am abject. They can do what they like with me.”
Chapter 45
190
"Does she love him, after all?"
Chapter 45
191
"To put her out of her misery ... out of our misery"
Chapter 46
192
"My real name. Why should this mean anything?"
Chapter 46
193
"And so I step up, into the darkness within, or else the light"
Chapter 46
194
"This item - I hesitate to call it a document"
Historical Notes
195
"Passing moral judgement"
Historical Notes
196
"Are there any questions?"
Historical Notes
197
"the Underground Frailroad"
Historical Notes
198
"our job is not to censure but to understand"
Historical Notes
