Olivia’s Reviews > The Testaments > Status Update

“Once a story you’ve regarded as true has turned false, you begin suspecting all stories”
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“The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it”

Wow, yes. If you have never had a faith, you’ll never understand what it feels like to lose it. It’s the death of your best friend.

“In the end, how much of belief comes from longing?”

Waiting with bated breath for the lesbian stuff I’m expecting

“Innocent men denying their guilt sound exactly like guilty men…Listeners are inclined to believe neither”

“How? How can it ever be well?”
“I don’t know, but it will be. I have faith. Having faith is hard work sometimes.”

We must all hang together, or we will all hang separately.

“What if I were to pray to Aunt Lydia at night, instead of to God?

I did try, later in the week. But the idea was too unthinkable — praying to a woman — so I stopped.”

“…and if it hadn’t been for the guns I might have laughed, not yet realizing that female laughter would soon be in short supply.”

“…the reality is that many children were loved and cherished, in Gilead as elsewhere, and many adults were kind though fallible, in Gilead as elsewhere.

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 seem to others.”

I feel this abt growing up religious all the time. Let me have the few good bits