The Testaments Quotes
"Only dead people are allowed to have statues, but I have been given one while still alive. Already I am petrified."
"The corrupt and blood-smeared fingerprints of the past must be wiped away to create a clean space for the morally pure generation that is surely about to arrive."
"But among these bloody fingerprints are those made by ourselves, and these can’t be wiped away so easily."
"Writing can be dangerous. What betrayals, and then what denunciations, might lie in store for me?"
"I write these words in my private sanctum within the library of Ardua Hall—one of the few libraries remaining after the enthusiastic book-burnings that have been going on across our land."
"Forbidden things are open to the imagination."
"It’s hard to remember calendar dates, especially since we did not have calendars."
"I regarded my reflection. The inventor of the mirror did few of us any favours: we must have been happier before we knew what we looked like."
"Isn’t that freedom of a sort? Not whether to die, but when and how."
"In my own present day I am a legend, alive but more than alive, dead but more than dead."
"We are not forgiving towards one another’s lapses, here at Ardua Hall."
"Knowledge is power, especially discreditable knowledge."
"Despite what you may have thought, my reader, there was beauty to be had in Gilead."
"Keeping up my anger was difficult, though, because by that time they were dead. You can be angry at dead people, but you can never have a conversation about what they did; or you can only have one side of it."
"How little time it takes to change a face: carve it like wood, harden it. No more of that wide-eyed daydream gazing I used to do. I’ve become sharper, more focused. I’ve become narrowed."
"She wore bright colours, like orange and hot pink, because she said they created a positive and energetic atmosphere."
"Cashmere! Who was going to buy thirty-year-old cashmere? It didn’t improve with age, she would say—not like her."
"Old adding machines that worked with a handle."
"Cameras—he liked ancient cameras. Some of them could take better pictures than anything nowadays, he’d say."
"Thinking back, I’m guessing that was their idea."
"Because what if there was a fire, said Melanie."
"Fake," said Melanie. "Everything about them is fake."
"Despite all that she did for me, Melanie had a distant smell."
"But outside of school I led a constricted life, since Neil and Melanie were so jumpy."
"Normal is like looking out a car window. Things pass by, this and that and this and that, without much significance."
"There was no point in shouting or flinging ourselves against the walls of the van: it would simply have been a futile expense of energy."
"For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night."
"Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep; in the morning they are like grass which groweth up."
"In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth."
"It depends what you mean by a mother. Is your mother the one who gives birth to you or the one who loves you the most?"
"Then Tabitha was your mother. And we Marthas are your mothers too, because we love you as well."
"Hatred is a very bad emotion because it curdles the soul."
"The few must make sacrifices for the sake of the many."
"But we must try to be cheerful. God likes cheerfulness."
"Every woman wanted a baby, said Aunt Estée. Every woman who wasn’t an Aunt or a Martha."
"The adult female body was one big booby trap as far as I could tell."
"This is not heaven. This is a place of snakes and ladders, and though I was once high up on a ladder propped against the Tree of Life, now I’ve slid down a snake."
"We must all make sacrifices in order to help other people."
"I was prepared to think the very worst of her, and I did."
"It was a boy, a healthy son for Paula and Commander Kyle. He was named Mark. But Ofkyle died."
"I won’t ever forget you," I said to her. "The others will, but I promise I won’t."
"It was like finding a handprint in a cave: it was a sign, it was a message. I was here. I existed. I was real."
"Aunt Lydia’s voice trembled a little as she was saying this."
"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."
"It’s amazing how naked you feel without those things."
"You pride yourself on being a realist, I told myself, so face the facts."
"I did not intend to be eliminated if I could help it."
"Mercy was a quality that did not operate in that place."
"It would be nice to stay like this forever: then I would never have to think about anything again."
"What was her name? Of course you will want to know. It was Crystal. And that is how I remember her now. I remember her as Crystal."
"A momentary psychotic break, I’d said. The strain of being in a strange and debilitating environment, such as Canada, can have that effect."
"Least said, soonest mended. I know you meant well."
"Astonishing," I exclaimed. "Not for nothing do we at Ardua Hall say ‘Pen Is Envy.’ "
"When you were being readied for marriage, you disappeared from your former life."
"I can do this, I thought. I can get through."
"One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others."
"I was right, but only just. You’d be surprised how quickly the mind goes soggy in the absence of other people."
"But the body has its twitches, which it can be humiliating as well as rewarding to obey. No lasting harm was done to me, some pleasure was both given and received, and none of these individuals took their swift dismissal from my life as a personal affront. Why expect more?"
"Pity, he said. "Under us, every virtuous woman may have a child, one way or another, as God intended. But I expect you were fully occupied in your, ah, so-called career."
"It wears you down. All that needless suffering of women. We intend to eliminate that. I am sure you approve."
"But loyalty to a higher truth is not treason, for the ways of God are not the ways of man, and they are most emphatically not the ways of woman."
"You may drink your coffee," he said. "A valuable commodity that is increasingly difficult to obtain. It would be a sin to reject what God has provided to his favoured ones through his bounty."
"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."
"We’re building a society congruent with the Divine Order—a city upon a hill, a light to all nations—and we are acting out of charitable care and concern."
"But I forgive you in advance. I, too, was once like you: fatally hooked on life."
"To err is human, to forgive divine. As someone once remarked."
"Everyone makes mistakes," I said magnarimously. "We are only human."
"Keep your friends close but your enemies closer. Having no friends, I must make do with enemies."
"It's a gamble every time you get up in the morning."
"Not every girl is suitable for marriage. For some, it is simply a waste of potential."
"You never know when [gratitude] may come in handy."
"Where there is an emptiness, the mind will obligingly fill it up. Fear is always at hand to supply any vacancies, as is curiosity."
"All things come to she who waits. Time wounds all heels. Patience is a virtue. Vengeance is mine."
"I’d never considered what it was like to leave a place you knew, and lose everything, and travel into the unknown."
"I was going to feel like that. I would be in a dark place, carrying a tiny spark of light, trying to find my way."
"Because my mission was successful," said Aunt Beatrice. "I brought back a precious Pearl. That’s you."
"Some days I see myself as the Recording Angel, collecting together all the sins of Gilead, including mine; on other days I shrug off this high moral tone."
"Most of the time, that is what it feels like here, far away from the war, in the still heart of the tornado."
"We’re stretched thin, all of us; we vibrate; we quiver, we’re always on the alert."
"Innocent men denying their guilt sound exactly like guilty men, as I am sure you have noticed, my reader."
"But some people don’t want to live in any of the ways that are allowed."
"And now abideth Faith, Hope, Charity, these three; but the greatest of these is Charity."
"Being able to read and write did not provide the answers to all questions. It led to other questions, and then to others."
"The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it."
"Bearing false witness was not the exception, it was common. Beneath its outer show of virtue and purity, Gilead was rotting."
"Their weapons were powerful but contaminating secrets."
"All of this power. All of this potential to judge the wicked in silence, and to punish them in ways they would not be able to anticipate. All of this vengeance."
"What happens if you do is partly your fault."
"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 any normal way."
"The best-laid plans gang aft agley, and trouble comes in threes."
"It is our mission to redeem, not to condemn on purely contingent grounds."
"No pain unless necessary, but if necessary, pain."
"Kindly step back and shut the door behind me," Aunt Lydia said. "I’m in a hurry. Where is Nicole?"
"I have long had my doubts about Aunt Vidala," I said.
"Don’t fuss," she said. Nicole came into the room.
"Hope they don’t bring back any ugly girls or sluts."
"It’s one or the other." Laughs from both checkpoint Angels.
"I hope you will live long enough to experience them."
"We will cover it up," I said. "I shall take the view that Aunt Immortelle was simply trying to investigate the faulty cistern, in order to spare valuable manpower that chore."
"Fly well, my messengers, my silver doves, my destroying angels. Land safely."