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.

Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

A hot wind was blowing around my head, the strands of my hair lifting and swirling in it, like ink spilled in water.

This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.

I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.

You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.