“The Handmaid’s Tale” is a dystopian drama television series based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. The series premiered on the streaming service Hulu in 2017 and has since become one of its most acclaimed original series.
The series follows Offred (real name June Osborne), portrayed by Elisabeth Moss, a Handmaid serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes). Stripped of her freedom, her family, and even her name, June must navigate the intricacies of Gilead’s regime as she plots to survive and ultimately escape to find her daughter and join the resistance.
Handmaid’s Tale Quotes
“We must treat these girls respectfully, in a godly fashion, despite the moral stain from their lives before.” – Andrew Pryce
“In reduced circumstances the desire to live attaches itself to strange object” – Offred
“It was true, I took too much for granted; I trusted fate, back then” – Offred
“A rose is a rose, except here. Here it has to mean something. It’s beautiful.” Offred
“The most painful thing is not the betrayal of trust, June. Do you know what’s most painful? The most painful thing in this entire ugly incident is the ingratitude.” – Aunt , Lydia
“How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. ” – Offred
“Never mistake a woman’s meekness for weakness.” – Mrs. Castillo
“The world can be quite an ugly place. But we cannot wish that ugliness away. We cannot hide from that ugliness.” – Aunt , Lydia
“There is more than one kind of freedom … Freedom to and freedom from.” – Aunt , Lydia
“There was an Offred before me. She helped me find my way out. She’s dead. She’s alive. She is me.” – Offred
“if it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending” – Offred
” I don’t need oranges. I need to scream. I need to grab the nearest machine gun.” – Offred
“Sterile. That’s a forbidden word. There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore. There’s only women who are fruitful and women who are barren.” – Offred
” I stretch out my arms to him, but he slips away. Like a ghost at daybreak. And I am left here.” – Offred
“Better never means better for everyone … It always means worse, for some.” – The Commander
“There’s always a black market, there’s always something that can be exchanged.” – Offred
” It’s hard making it in a society that only cares about profit and pleasure. No wonder God has turned His back on us. No wonder there are no children. He doesn’t want them to grow up in this screwed-up world.” – Andrew Pryce
“There’s always someone, even when there is no one.” – Offred
“Please, God, I don’t want pain. I don’t want to be a doll, hung on the wall. I want to keep on living. I’ll do anything. Resign my body freely to the uses of others. I’ll sacrifice. I’ll repent. I’ll abdicate. I’ll renounce.” – Offred
Other The Handmaid’s Tale Quotes
“Better never means better for everyone… It always means worse, for some.”
“Freedom, like everything else, is relative.”
“There’s always something to occupy the inquiring mind.”
“I am not your justification for existence.”
“The world is full of weapons if you’re looking for them.”
“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”
“Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.”
“Dear God, I think, I will do anything you like. Now that you’ve let me off, I’ll obliterate myself, if that is what you really want; I’ll empty myself, truly, become a chalice. I’ll give up Nick, I’ll forget about the others, I’ll stop complaining. I’ll accept my lot. I’ll sacrifice. I’ll repent. I’ll abdicate. I’ll renounce.”
‘The problem wasn’t only with the women, he says. The main problem was with the men. . . You know what they were complaining about the most? Inability to feel. . . Do they feel now? I say. Yes, he says, looking at me. They do.’
“Agreed to it right away, really she didn’t care, anything with two legs and a good you-know-what was fine with her. They aren’t squeamish, they don’t have the same feelings we do.”
“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.
We lived in the gaps between the stories.”
‘I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.
“You can’t help what you feel but you can help how you behave.”
The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you’ve been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil”
“If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending…
But if it’s a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone.
You don’t tell a story only to yourself. There’s always someone else. Even when there is no one.”
“It makes me feel more in control, as if there is a choice, a decision that could be made one way or the other.”
“I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight.”
“When we think of the past it’s the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.”
“You can think clearly only with your clothes on.”
“We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?”
“Give me children, or else I die. Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? Behold my maid Bilhah. She shall bear fruit upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.”
“I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will . . . Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping.’
“You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.”
The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5 Quotes
“Everything tastes better when Fred’s dead.” -Vicky
“Oh, look at us all, getting along like friendly diplomats, trying to bury the hatchet.” -Commander Lawrence
“Blessed be the stupid fruit.” -Esther
“It’s not pink though. She’s not a little girl anymore.” -Moira
“You’re an unusual woman, Serena, and we don’t have the proper infrastructure for unusual women to live within our borders.” -Commander Lawrence
“I’m not an American citizen. My allegiance is to God.” -Serena
“We can’t let a few simple rules get in the way of God’s will, can we?” -Serena
“You know, I just wonder, if you never allow yourself to enjoy the spoils of your position, why seek it in the first place?” -Commander Putnam
“It’s funny how every tiny baby you see makes you think you’ve never seen a baby before.” -June
