Bookish Quotes

I read books and live between the pages. “One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.” ― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

[the-more-i-arty]

From the Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.

[prokopetz]

Flavours of unreliable narrator:

Lying to the reader

Lying to themselves

Simply misinformed

Not paying attention

Has weird priorities

Assumed you knew

Hates you personally

Bad at communicating

Easily sidetracked

Will believe anything

Has weird prejudices

Just kind of dumb

[sarahreesbrennan]

Does deeply repressed count as having weird prejudices…

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

Such a cruel thing, memory. 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.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) (Transcript of Witness Testimony 369A)

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not suppose to know it.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) (Transcript of Witness Testimony 369A)

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

I try to suit the occupations to the qualifications. It's better that way, and I am a great proponent of better. In the absence of best. Which is how we live now.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) (The Ardua Hall Holograph)

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

I took care not to react. It's a skill, not reacting.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) (The Ardua Hall Holograph)

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

You'd be surprised how quickly the mind goes soggy in the absence of other people. One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others. I was one person: I risked becoming no person.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) (The Ardua Hall Holograph)

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

The women in charge handed them tissues. They said calm things like You need to be strong. They were trying to make things better. But it can put a lot of pressure on a person to be told they need to be strong. That's another thing I've learned.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) (Transcript of Witness Testimony 369B)

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

At the time I thought, why cry, you should be happy, you got out. But after all that's happened to me since that day, I understand why. 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.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) (Transcript of Witness Testimony 369B)

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

I meant well too, I sometimes mumble silently. I meant it for the best, or for the best available, which is not the same thing. Still, think how much worse it could have been if not for me.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) (The Ardua Hall Holograph)

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

It was also shameful: when a shameful thing is done to you, the shamefulness rubs off on you. You feel dirtied.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) (Transcript of Witness Testimony 369A)

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

Why did I think it would nonetheless be business as usual? Because we'd been hearing these things for so long, I suppose. You don't believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) (The Ardua Hall Holohgraph)

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

Such regrets are of no practical use. I made my choices, and then having made them, I had fewer choices. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one most travelled by. It was littered with corpses, as such roads are. But as you will have noticed, my own corpse is not among them.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2)

(The Ardua Hall Holograph)

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

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.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) (Transcript of Witness Testimony 369B)

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

How can I regain myself? How to shrink back to my normal size, the size of an ordinary woman? But perhaps it is too late for that. You take the first step, and to save yourself from the consequences, you take the next one. In times like ours, there are only two directions: up or plummet.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) (The Ardua Hall Holograph)

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

Right now I still have some choice in the matter. Not whether to die, but when and how. Isn't that freedom of a sort?

Oh, and who to take down with me. I have made my list.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2)

(The Ardua Hall Holograph)

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

I hope you will remember, too, that we all have some nostalgia for whatever kindness we have known as children, however bizarre the conditions of that childhood may seem to others.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) (Transcript of Witness Testimony 369A)