What he wants is intimacy, but I can’t give him that.
At the outset Verna had not intended to kill anyone.
I am like a room where things once happened and now nothing does, except.
I could just sit here, peacefully. I could withdraw. It’s possible to go so far in, so far down and back, they could never get you out.
That is a reconstruction, too.
Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn?
Its racist policies, for instance, were firmly rooted in the pre-Gilead period, and racist fears provided some of the emotional fuel that allowed the Gilead takeover to succeed as well as it did. Our.
I picture you as a young woman, bright, ambitious. 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.
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.
She doesn’t have to stay locked into place, into this mournful, drawn-out, low-grade misery. She has all kinds of choices and possibilities, and the only thing that’s keeping her away from them is lack of willpower.
I’ve got nothing against telepathy, said Jane; but the telephone is so much more dependable.
I still have it in me to feel sorry for him. Moira is right, I am a wimp.
What’s the difference between vision and a vision? The former relates to something it’s assumed you’ve seen, the latter to something it’s assumed you haven’t. Language is not always dependable either.
There is a silence. But sometimes it’s as dangerous not to speak.
But also I’m hungry. This is monstrous, but nevertheless it’s true. Death makes me hungry. Maybe it’s because I’ve been emptied; or maybe it’s the body’s way of seeing to it that I remain alive, continue to repeat its bedrock prayer: I am, I am. I am, still. I want to go to bed, make love, right now. I think of the word relish. I could eat a horse.
He could never get used to her, she was fresh every time, she was a casketful of secrets.
A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the center of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier, once. They’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to.
Saved by childbearing, I think. What did we suppose would save us, in the time before?
Pen Is Envy, Aunt Lydia would say, quoting another Center motto, warning us away from such objects.
It is better to journey than to arrive, as long as we journey in firm faith and for selfless ends.