Offred

"I didn't know who to trust. They could have been plants, spies."

"She was the kind of person to whom things are done, not the kind that does."

"You are not your own, or are you?"

"I'm not really here, I'm in another city, another time."

"She's going to die. She might die anyway."

"We were not women in the usual sense."

"The truth is that we are not."

"I'm trying to look serious, like I understand the seriousness of the situation."

"She is a real person. She is real. She is here."

"The window is small, too high up for me to see much."

"Blood flows on the wall, or seems to."

"I am not her. I am not even my own."

"We lived, but not really."

"The worst part is the doubt. Not that they're lying, but whether they're lying."

"These are not words. These are not supposed to be words."

"I would like to believe I was of importance once."

"But I must not despair. Despair is a sin."

"We didn't get to know each other in any of the ways that matter."

"The Republic of Gilead, I said to myself. Gileadean. It has a literary sound to it. Almost biblical."

"Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some."

"I am not her. I am myself. But that doesn't seem to matter."

"We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print."

"I would like to believe this is a story I'm telling. I need to believe it."

"Now we walkslinkingly, quickly, with our eyes down, through the aisle of the supermarket."

"It's hard to imagine now, how we lived then."

"I used to think of my body as an instrument of pleasure. It's funny how quickly those feelings disappear."

"I wonder who they've made of me?"

"The key to my new life is not in my hands."

"She didn't love me. She couldn't have."

"I'm not going to think about that."