|
Quote
|
Character
|
Chapter
|
|
“Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?”
|
Offred
|
2
|
|
“There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law.”
|
Offred
|
11
|
|
“Did I really wear bathing suits, at the beach? I did, without thought, among men, without caring that my legs, my arms, my thighs and back were on display, could be seen. Shameful, immodest.”
|
Offred
|
12
|
|
“Four digits and an eye, a passport in reverse. It’s supposed to guarantee that I will never be able to fade, finally, into another landscape. I am too important, too scarce, for that. I am a national resource.”
|
Offred
|
12
|
|
“I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.”
|
Offred
|
13
|
|
“As long as we do this, butter our skin to keep it soft, we can believe that we will someday get out, that we will be touched again, in love or desire.”
|
Offred
|
17
|
|
“We are containers, it’s only the insides of our bodies that are important. The outside can become hard and wrinkled, for all they care, like the shell of a nut.”
|
Offred
|
17
|
|
“Mother... You wanted a women’s culture. Well, now there is one. It isn’t what you meant, but it exists.”
|
Offred
|
21
|
|
“My breasts are painful, they’re leaking a little...
Each of us holds in her lap a phantom, a ghost baby”
|
Offred
|
21
|
|
“We are two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.”
|
Offred
|
23
|
|
"So now that we don’t have different clothes, I say, ‘you merely have different women.’ This is irony, but he doesn’t acknowledge it.”
|
Offred
|
37
|
