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. (Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale")
He stops, looks up at this window, and I can see the white oblong of his face. We look at each other. I have no rose to toss, he has no lute. But it's the same kind of hunger. (Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale")
Here and there are worms, evidence of the fertility of the soil, caught by the sun, half dead; flexible and pink, like lips. (Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale")
His mouth is on me, his hands, I can't wait and he's moving, already, love, it's been so long, I'm alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling and water softly everywhere, never-ending. (Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale")
I am in a room where things once happened and now nothing does, except for the pollen of the weeds that grow up outside the window, blowing in as dust across the floor. (Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale")
I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light. (Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale")
I feel like cotton candy: sugar and air. Squeeze me and I'd turn into a small sickly damp wad of weeping pinky-red. (Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale")
I marvel again at the nakedness of men's lives: the showers right out in the open, the body exposed for inspection and comparison, the public display of privates. What is it for? What purposes of reassurance does it serve? The flashing of a badge, look, everyone, all is in order, I belong here. Why don't women have to prove to one another that they are women? Some form of unbuttoning, some split-crotch routine, just as casual. A doglike sniffing. (Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale")
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. (Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale")
I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name; remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me. I want to steal something (Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale")