Dystopia - THT - Quotes

We slept in

what had once been the gymnasium (C1)

We yearned for the future...

How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability? (C1)

In the army cots that had been set up in row...

with spaces between so we could not talk (C1)

Something could be exchanged...

\[...] we still had our bodies. That was our fantasy (C1)

They've removed anything...

you could tie a rope to (C2)

Waste not want not...

I am not being wasted. Why do I want? (C2)

Like other things now...

thought must be rationed (C2)

Red, the colour of blood...

which defines us (C2)

But the frown isn't personal...

it's the red dress she disapproves of, and what it stands for (C2)

Things haven't settled down...

it's too soon, everyone is unsure about our exact status (C3)

The woman sitting in front of me was Serena Joy...

Or had been, once. So it was worse than I thought (C3)

The truth is that she is my spy...

as I am hers (C4)

Such moments are the rewards I hold out for myself...

like the candy I hoarded, as a child, at the back of a drawer (C4)

They touch with their eyes instead and I move my hips a little...

feeling the red skirt sway around me (C4)

Women were not...

protected then (C5)

Their heads are uncovered and their hair is too...

exposed in all its darkness and sexuality (C5)

We're supposed to look...

this is what they are there for, hanging on the wall (C6)

The night is mine, my own time...

to do with as I will, as long as I am quiet (C7)

You don't tell a story to yourself...

there's always someone else (C7)

The sanctity of the home, about how women...

should stay home (C8)

She doesn't make speeches anymore...

she has become speechless (C8)

In this house...

we all envy each other something (C8)

It smells of me....

in former times, when I was a mother (C8)

Was he in my room?...

I called it mine (C8)

The stains on the mattress. Like dried flower petals...

Not recent. Old love (C9)

I am like a child here...

there are some things I must not be told (C9)

We lived in the gaps...

between the stories (C10)

FAITH in faded blue...

the leaves of the lilies a dingy green (C10)

There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore...

not officially. There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren. That's the law. (C11)

Give me children...

or else I die (C11)

I don't want to look at something...

that determines me so completely (C12)

But maybe boredom is erotic...

when women do it, for men (C13)

For a moment, even though we knew...

what was being done to her, we despised her (C13)

"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 (C13)

Of all the dreams...

this is the worst (C13)

Any news, now...

is better than none (C14)

I feel transparent...

Surely they will be able to see through me (C14)

Maybe he's just forgotten the protocol...

but maybe it's deliberate (C15)

The Bible is kept locked up...

the way people once kept tea locked up, so the servants wouldn't steal it (C15)

There wasn't a lot of choice but there was some...

and this is what I chose (C16)

We are containers...

it's only the insides of our bodies that are important (C17)

It's the message, which may never arrive...

that keeps me alive. I believe in the message (C18)

They could tell once...

with machines, but that is now outlawed (C19)

Play cards, most likely, or read...

some masculine pursuit (C19)

I am not your...

justification for existence (C20)

She'll never be declared Unwoman...

that is her reward (C21)

You wanted a women's culture...

well, now there is one. It isn't what you meant, but it exists (C21)

Moira had power now, she'd been set loose...

she'd set herself loose. She was now a loose woman (C22)

This is a reconstruction...

All of it is a reconstruction. (C23)

We are two-legged wombs...

that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices (C23)

Seemed kinky in the extreme...

a violation too in its own way (C25)

Staring at the magazine...

as he dangled it before me like fishbait, I wanted it (C25)

A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere...

as long as it stays inside the maze (C27)

'I thought you were a true believer,' Ofglen says...

'I thought you were,' I say (C27)

If Moira thought she could create Utopia by...

shutting herself up in a women-only enclave she was sadly mistaken (C28)

There wasn't even...

an enemy you could put your finger on (C28)

Women can't hold property anymore...

it's a new law (C28)

I feel as if somebody...

cut off my feet (C28)

Caught in the act...

sinfully Scrabbling (C28)

'Oh God. Its no joke...

Oh God oh God. How can I keep on living? (C30)

Some dead...

President they shot (C33)

All we've done is...

return things to nature's norm (C34)

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum...

fat lot of good it did her (C35)

As if I'm lacking manual skills or teeth. I have both, however...

that's why I'm not allowed a knife (C35)

Childish allure...

of dressing up (C36)

It's a juvenile display, the whole act, and pathetic...

but its something I understand (C37)

'That shit you're with?...

I've had him, he's the pits' (C38)

You'd have three or four good years before...

your snatch wears out and they send you to the boneyard (C38)

A Braille he can read, a cattle-brand...

it means ownership (C39)

'The penalty for rape...

as you know, is death (C43)

It's true, there is a bloodlust...

I want to tear, gouge, rend (C43)

'Don't be stupid. He wasn't a rapist at all...

he was a political. He was one of ours' (C43)

The fact that she's said anything...

however guarded, encourages me (C44)

In my lap is a handful of...

crumpled stars (C46)

And so I step up, into the...

darkness within; or else the light (C46)

Since dubbed by some of our historical wags...

'The Underground Frailroad' (HN)

Age of the R-strain syphilis and...

also the infamous AIDS epidemic (HN)

As for the ultimate fate of our narrator...

it remains obscure (HN)