Atwood The Testaments Quotes

You don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.

As they say, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Once a story you’ve regarded as true has turned false, you begin suspecting all stories.

The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it.

You’d be surprised how quickly the mind goes soggy in the absence of other people. One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others. I was one person: I risked becoming no person.

And how easily a hand becomes a fist.

No one wants to die,” said Becka. “But some people don’t want to live in any of the ways that are allowed.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one most travelled by. It was littered with corpses, as such roads are. But as you will have noticed, my own corpse is not among them.

Being able to read and write did not provide answers to all questions. It led to other questions, and then to others.

The inventor of the mirror did few of us any favours: we must have been happier before we knew what we looked like.

But it can put a lot of pressure on a person to be told they need to be strong.

Nobody is any authority on the fucks other people give,

Where there is an emptiness, the mind will obligingly fill it up. Fear is always at hand to supply any vacancies, as is curiosity. I have had ample experience with both.

All that was necessary was a law degree and a uterus: a lethal combination.

We’re stretched thin, all of us; we vibrate; we quiver, we’re always on the alert. Reign of terror, they used to say, but terror does not exactly reign. Instead it paralyzes. Hence the unnatural quiet.

Still, I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?

It’s better that way, and I am a great proponent of better. In the absence of best.

I was the age at which parents suddenly transform from people who know everything into people who know nothing. —

underlings given sudden power frequently become the worst abusers of it.

How can I have behaved so badly, so cruelly, so stupidly? you will ask. You yourself would never have done such things! But you yourself will never have had to.

Giving up was the new normal, and I have to say it was catching.

I was buying time. One is always buying something.

You take the first step, and to save yourself from the consequences, you take the next one. In times like ours, there are only two directions: up or plummet.

I, too, was once like you: fatally hooked on life.

The muscles of my face were beginning to hurt. Under some conditions, smiling is a workout.

You don't believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.

Totalitarianisms may crumble from within, as they fail to keep the promises that brought them to power; or they may be attacked from without; or both. There are no sure-fire formulas, since very little in history is inevitable

How tedious is a tyranny in the throes of enactment. It’s always the same plot.

You pride yourself on being a realist, I told myself, so face the facts. There’s been a coup, here in the United States, just as in times past in so many other countries. Any forced change of leadership is always followed by a move to crush the opposition. The opposition is led by the educated, so the educated are the first to be eliminated.

Life is not about hair,” I said then, only half jocularly. Which is true, but it is also true that hair is about life. It is the flame of the body’s candle, and as it dwindles the body shrinks and melts away.

But sins must not be overlooked simply because the sinner is skilled.

The ability to concoct plausible lies is a talent not to be underestimated.

Love is a discipline, like prayer,” I said.

Wedlock: it had a dull metallic sound, like an iron door clicking shut.

I made choices, and then, having made them, I had fewer choices.

You are of course fully in control of what you choose to read,

When a shameful thing is done to you, the shamefulness rubs off on you. You feel dirtied.

They were wearing camouflage gear direct from central casting, and if it hadn't been for the guns I might have laughed, not yet realizing that female laughter would soon be in short supply.

Forbidden things are open to the imagination.

Sorry solves nothing

Keep your friends close but your enemies closer. Having no friends, I must make do with enemies.

you could believe you were living virtuously and also murder people if you were a fanatic.

knowledge is power, especially discreditable knowledge.

You need to be strong. They were trying to make things better. But it can put a lot of pressure on a person to be told they need to be strong.

One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others. I was one person: I risked becoming no person.

Nobody has any authority on the fucks that other people give.

The ways of God are not the ways of man, and they are most emphatically not the ways of woman.

Such a cruel thing, memory. We can’t remember what it is that we’ve forgotten. That we have been made to forget. That we've had to forget, in order to pretend to live here in a normal way.

Nobody is any authority of the fucks other people give.

Penises,” I said thoughtfully. “Them again.

Not for nothing do we at Ardua Hall say ‘Pen Is Envy.’ 

Think of me as a guide. Think of yourself as a wanderer in a dark wood. It’s about to get darker.

What good is it to throw yourself in front of a steamroller out of moral principles and then be crushed flat like a sock emptied of its foot?

but they mean well, I remind myself. Is that ever a convincing excuse when there’s blood on the carpet?

Torture is like dancing: I’m too old for it. Let the younger ones practice their bravery.

Such regrets are of no practical use. I made choices, and then, having made them, I had fewer choices. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one most travelled by. It was littered with corpses, as such roads are. But as you will have noticed, my own corpse is not among them.

I always made dough men, I never made dough women, because after they were baked I would eat them, and that made me feel I had a secret power over men. It was becoming clear to me that, despite the urges Aunt Vidala said I aroused in them, I had no power over them otherwise.

Our time together is drawing short, my reader. Possibly you will view these pages of mine as a fragile treasure box, to be opened with the utmost care. Possibly you will tear them apart, or burn them: that often happens to words.

I feared I might lose my faith. If you’ve never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying, that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you’ll be left all alone.

I’m all ears,” she said. An untruth—her ears were a small part of her—but I let that pass.

Just because people are related to you doesn’t mean you love them,

Well. Its the penises.

The Wheel of Fortune rotates, fickle as the moon. Soon those who were down will move upwards. And vice versa, of course

You’d be surprised how quickly the mind goes soggy in the absence of other people. One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others.

It’s a gamble every time you get up in the morning,

One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others.

Innocent men denying their guilt sound exactly like guilty men, as I am sure you have noticed, my reader. Listeners are inclined to believe neither.

We can’t always do what we want,” said Zilla gently. “Even you.” “And sometimes we have to do what we hate,” said Vera. “Even you.

I shiver: whose feet are walking on my grave? Time, I plead to the air, just a little more time. That's all I need.

It was always a cruelty to promise them equality,” he said, “since by their nature they can never achieve it. We have already begun the merciful task of lowering their expectations.

At the time I thought, Why cry, you should be happy, you got out. But after all that’s happened to me since that day, I understand why. You hold it in, whatever it is, until you can make it through the worst part. Then, once you’re safe, you can cry all the tears you couldn’t waste time crying before.

One by one I could handle them, but if they combined into a mob of three I would have trouble. Divide and conquer would be my motto.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.” —GEORGE ELIOT, DANIEL DERONDA

That birthday was the day I discovered that I was a fraud. Or not a fraud, like a bad magician: a fake, like a fake antique. I was a forgery, done on purpose.

Reign of terror, they used to say, but terror does not exactly reign. Instead it paralyzes. Hence the unnatural quiet.

Such regrets are of no practical use. I made choices, and then, having made them, I had fewer choices.

She who cannot control herself cannot control the path to duty. Do not fight the waves of anger, use the anger as your fuel. Inhale. Exhale. Sidestep. Circumvent. Deflect.

Keep steady, I told myself. Don’t share too much about yourself, it will be used against you. Listen carefully. Save all clues. Don’t show fear.

It’s foolish to joke with those who have absolute control over you. They don’t like it; they think you don’t appreciate the full extent of their power.

But in an account such as this, it is better to be scrupulous about your faults, as about all your other actions. Otherwise no one will understand why you made the decisions that you made.

The adult female body was one big booby trap as far as I could tell. If there was a hole, something was bound to be shoved into it and something else was bound to come out, and that went for any kind of hole: a hole in a wall, a hole in a mountain, a hole in the ground. There were so many things that could be done to it or go wrong with it, this adult female body, that I was left feeling I would be better off without it.

How tedious is a tyranny in the throes of enactment.

When push comes to shove, only one's own nightmares are of any interest or significance.

She didn’t make the world the way it was, and she had been my mother, and I had loved her and she had loved me.

Because if you weren’t an Aunt or a Martha, said Aunt Vidala, what earthly use were you if you didn’t have a baby?

Which way will the cat jump?

If I’d been older I would’ve asked what it was right away, but I didn’t because I wanted to postpone the moment when I would know what it was. In stories I’d read, I’d come across the words nameless dread. They’d just been words then, but now that’s exactly what I felt.

We talked about our real mothers and how we wanted to know who they’d been. Perhaps we ought not to have shared so much, but it was very comforting. “I wish I had a sister,” she said to me one day. “And if I did, that person would be you.

We were custodians of an invaluable treasure that existed, unseen, inside us; we were precious flowers that had to be kept safely inside glass houses, or else we would be ambushed and our petals would be torn off and our treasure would be stolen and we would be ripped apart and trampled by the ravenous men who might lurk around any corner, out there in the wide sharp-edged sin-ridden world.

You’ll be looking to make a niche for yourself in whatever dim, echoing caverns of academia may still exist by your time. I situate you at your desk, your hair tucked back behind your ears, your nail polish chipped—for nail polish will have returned, it always does. You’re frowning slightly, a habit that will increase as you age. I hover behind you, peering over your shoulder: your muse, your unseen inspiration, urging you on. You’ll labour over this manuscript of mine, reading and rereading, picking nits as you go, developing the fascinated but also bored hatred biographers so often come to feel for their subjects.

we were precious flowers that had to be kept safely inside glass houses, or else we would be ambushed and our petals would be torn off and our treasure would be stolen and we would be ripped apart and trampled by the ravenous men who might lurk around any corner, out there in the wide sharp-edged sin-ridden world.

Becka said that writing was almost the same as that—each letter was like a picture or a row of stitching, and it was also like a musical note; you just had to learn how to form the letters, and then how to attach them together,

There were swings in one of the parks, but because of our skirts, which might be blown up by the wind and then looked into, we were not to think of taking such a liberty as a swing. Only boys could taste that freedom; only they could swoop and soar; only they could be airborne. I have still never been on a swing. It remains one of my wishes.

What good is it to throw yourself in front of a steamroller out of moral principles and then be crushed flat like a sock emptied of its foot? Better to fade into the crowd, the piously praising, unctuous, hate-mongering crowd. Better to hurl rocks than to have them hurled at you. Or better for your chances of staying alive.

The world was no longer solid and dependable, it was porous and deceptive. Anything could disappear. At the same time, everything I looked at was very clear. It was like one of those surrealist paintings we’d studied in school the year before. Melted clocks in the desert, solid but unreal.

So peaceful, the streets; so tranquil, so orderly; yet underneath the deceptively placid surfaces, a tremor, like that near a high-voltage power line. We’re stretched thin, all of us; we vibrate; we quiver, we’re always on the alert. Reign of terror, they used to say, but terror does not exactly reign. Instead it paralyzes. Hence the unnatural quiet.

Aunt Vidala said that best friends led to whispering and plotting and keeping secrets, and plotting and secrets led to disobedience to God, and disobedience led to rebellion, and girls who were rebellious became women who were rebellious, and a rebellious woman was even worse than a rebellious man because rebellious men became traitors, but rebellious women became adulteresses.

God isn’t what they say,” she said. She said you could believe in Gilead or you could believe in God, but not both. That was how she had managed her own crisis. I said that I wasn’t sure I would be able to choose. Secretly I feared that I would be unable to believe in either. Still, I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?

Another thing: the kids from school had pictures of themselves—a lot of pictures. Their parents documented every minute of their lives. Some of the kids even had photos of themselves being born, which they’d brought to Show and Tell. I used to think that was gross—blood and great big legs, with a little head coming out from between them. And they had baby pictures of themselves, hundreds of them. These kids could hardly burp without some adult pointing a camera at them and telling them to do it again—as if they lived their lives twice, once in reality and the second time for the photo.

Our time together is drawing short, my reader. Possibly you will view these pages of mine as a fragile treasure box, to be opened with the utmost care. Possibly you will tear them apart, or burn them: that often happens to words. Perhaps you’ll be a student of history, in which case I hope you’ll make something useful of me: a warts-and-all portrait, a definitive account of my life and times, suitably footnoted; though if you don’t accuse me of bad faith I will be astonished. Or, in fact, not astonished: I will be dead, and the dead are hard to astonish.