Quotes about Society

Human society, they claimed, was a sort of monster, its main by-products being corpses and rubble.

All those paintings of women, in art galleries, surprised at private moments. Nymph Sleeping. Susanna and the Elders. Woman bathing, one foot in a tin tub - Renoir, or was it Degas? both, both women plump. Diana and her maidens, a moment before they catch the hunter's prying eyes. Never any paintings called Man Washing Socks in Sink.)

Maybe all women should be robots, he thinks with a tinge of acid: the flesh-and-blood ones are out of control.

What will Ofwarren give birth to? A baby, as we all hope? Or something else, an Unbaby, with a pinhead or a snout like a dog's, or two bodies, or a hole in its heart or no arms, or webbed hands and feet? There's no telling. They could tell once, with machines, but that is now outlawed. What would be the point of knowing, anyway? You can't have them taken out; whatever it is must be carried to term.

His head is a little below mine, so that when he looks up at me it's at a juvenile angle. It must amuse him, this fake subservience. (...) The problem wasn't only the women, he says. The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them any more. (...) That was part of it, the sex was too easy. Anyone could just buy it. There was nothing to work for, nothing to fight for. (...)

Yes," she said in a voice squeaky with fright. She was younger and still attractive then; she hadn't yet allowed her body to engorge. I have noted since that some kinds of men like to bully beautiful women.

but love was undependable, it came and then it went; so it was good to have a money value, because then at least those who wanted to make a profit from you made sure you were fed enough and not damaged by too much. Also there were many who had neither love nor money value and having one of these things was better than having nothing.

Its racist policies, for instance, were firmly rooted in the pre-Gilead period, and racist fears provided some of the emotional fuel that allowed the Gilead takeover to succeed as well as it did.

A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women.

Sometimes he gets high, on the pot that circulates as freely as cigarettes did once. He thinks he should be enjoying this experience more than he actually does.

Sex has been domesticated, stripped of the promised mystery, added to the category of the merely expected. It's just what is done, mundane as hockey. It's celibacy these days that would raise eyebrows.

You don't teach boys to be charming. It makes people think they are devious.