We do not know how we'd behave. But a lot of people facing fascism didn't become fascists. I don't happen to believe that we are all monsters.

I tell, therefore you are.

But my dreaming self refuses to be consoled. It continues to wander, aimless, homeless, alone. It cannot be convinced of its safety by any evidence drawn from my waking life.

We are silent, considering shortfalls. There's not much time left, for us to become what we once intended. Jon had potential, but it's not a word that can be used comfortably any more. Potential has a shelf-life.

All writers must go from now to once a upon a time; all must go from here to there; all must descend to where the stories are kept; all must take care not to be captured and held immobile by the past.

Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.

The society in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under Perry Miller, to whom the book is dedicated.