Time, memory, and storytelling

Quote

Character

Chapter

“I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it... If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending.”

Offred

7

“A story is like a letter. Dear You, I’ll say. Just you, without a name.”

Offred

7

"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."

Offred

10

“They were paintings about suspended animation; about waiting, about objects not in use. They were paintings about boredom.”

Offred

13

“There’s time to spare. This is one of the things I wasn’t prepared for — the amount of unfilled time, the long parentheses of nothing. Time as white sound.”

Offred

13

“One detaches oneself. One describes.”

Offred

16

"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."

Offred

21

“This is a reconstruction. All of it is a reconstruction.

It’s a reconstruction now, in my head.”

Offred

23

“It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, cross currents, nuances; too many gestures.”

Offred

23

"But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot."

Offred

33

“I can’t remember exactly, because I had no way of writing it down.”

Offred

38

“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 is nothing I can do to change it.”

Offred

41

“I didn’t and he’s fading. Day by day, night by night he recedes, and I become more faithless.”

Offred

41