Offred

"I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure or a means of reproduction."

"I am not my own."

"I feel like a cow."

"There is more than one kind of freedom."

"I'm alive, I live, I want to keep on living."

"Aunt Lydia smells like old lady skin."

"We are two-legged wombs."

"I didn't think of him as real."

"Everything was simpler then."

"I am not allowed to read."

"None of us can be born without mothers."

"I am of use."

"Once I was a scholar and a teacher."

"The walls of the room are soft, padded, like a cell in a madhouse."

"She's a woman, but in the most limited sense."

"I'm so cold, so alone."

"I want to be valued, at least."

"I long to touch my daughter."

"I hope nothing bad will happen to me."

"It was not safe, to say or even think such things."

"Why do we allow it, then?"

"I am a national resource."

"Things have not been the same since."

"I used to have a life."

"I try not to think of anything."

"She didn't really love her, she just thought she should."

"I'm terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me."

"I don't know where I am."

"I would like to believe this is not the world we deserve."

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