Clara

 Favourite quotes:

I would like to believe this is a story I'm telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.

“My name isn't Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it's forbidden. I tell myself it doesn't matter, your name is like your telephone number , useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter. I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I'll come back to dig up, one day. I think of this name as buried.”

There's a window with white curtains, and the glass is shatterproof. But it isn't running away they're afraid of. A Handmaid wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes. The ones you can open in yourself given a cutting edge. Or a twisted sheet and a chandelier.

“I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?”

“Will you wait for me forever?”

“Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn't give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. The scenery was the last thing on my mind.”

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

“What happens when people open their hearts?” “They get better.”

“Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment.

“Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”

“But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.”

I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world. 

And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. 

When he died, all things soft and beautiful and bright would be buried with him. 

You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.

We should live here.' After just two days of the possibilities of Venice, I said, ‘We should live here.' And Tom's answer was, ‘We should fly to the moon.' But he was smiling.

”Dunno much about art.” “You don't have to. That's the wonderful thing about it. It's about reacting to it. Feeling it, if you like. It's not really anything to do with knowledge” 

"What do you want to kiss me for? I'm filthy."
"So am I." 

“Saukeln,” she laughed, and as she held up her hand, she knew completely that he was simultaneosly calling her a Saumensch. I think that's as close to love as eleven-year-olds can get.

A Small But Noteworthy Note: I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They're running at me.

  On many counts, taking a boy like Ruby was robbery - so much life, so much to live for - yet somehow, I'm certain he would have loved to see the frightening rubble and the swelling of the sky on the night he passed away. He'd have cried and turned and smiled if only he could have seen the book thief on her hands and knees, next to his lifeless body. He'd have been glad to witness her kissing his dusty, bombhit lips.Yes, I know it.In the darkness of my dark-beating heart, I know.He'd have loved it all right. You see? Even death has a heart.