30 of the Best Quotes from 'The Handmaid's Tale'

Amy Mackelden
·5 min read
Photo credit: Hulu
Photo credit: Hulu


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Now in its fifth season, The Handmaid's Tale continues to grip viewers, as we follow June Osbourne's journey outside of Gilead. Thanks to the caliber of its source material, The Handmaid's Tale regularly features memorable quotes, many of which it's impossible to forget.

While the show has slowly deviated from Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel, episodes of Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale often pop with biting insults, insightful observations, pertinent feminism, or social commentary that hits a little too close to home. Here, we round up 30 of the best quotes from The Handmaid's Tale so far.

Season 1

  • "I don't need oranges. I just need to scream." —June, Season 1, Episode 1.

  • "I know this must feel so strange, but ordinary is just what you're used to. This may not be ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. This will become ordinary." —Aunt Lydia, Season 1, Episode 1.

  • "Trusting anyone's dangerous. Especially a carpet-munching gender traitor." — Emily, Season 1, Episode 2.

  • "I can't stop thinking about the girl in the horror movie that goes down to the basement when the light is out. The girl who thinks her boyfriend with the perfect hair is just playing a sexy prank. 'Justin? Are you there?' And then she descends with a stupid smile to her bloody end. The girl's a fucking moron." — June, Season 1, Episode 2.

  • "Now I'm awake to the world. I was asleep before. That's how we let it happen. When they slaughtered Congress, we didn't wake up. When they blamed terrorists and suspended the Constitution, we didn't wake up then either. They said it would be temporary. Nothing changes instantaneously. In a gradually heating bathtub, you'd be boiled to death before you knew it." — June, Season 1, Episode 3.

  • "It's gonna end the same no matter what you do, so there's no point trying to be tough or brave. Brave isn't part of any of this. Everybody breaks. Everybody." — Nick, Season 1, Episode 3.

  • "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, bitches." — June, Season 1, Episode 4.

  • “You can wet the rim of a glass and run your finger around the rim and it will make a sound. This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter.” — June, Season 1, Episode 4.

  • "We only wanted to make the world better. … Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse for some." — The Commander, Season 1, Episode 5.

    Photo credit: Hulu
    Photo credit: Hulu


  • "Every love story's a tragedy if you wait long enough." — The Commander, Season 1, Episode 5.

  • "Love isn't real. It was never anything more than lust, with a good marketing campaign." — The Commander, Season 1, Episode 5.

  • "Whether this is my end or a new beginning, I have no way of knowing. I have given myself over into the hands of strangers. I have no choice. It can't be helped. And so I step up, into the darkness within. Or else the light." — June, Season 1, Episode 10.

Season 2

  • "They can't scare us back into the closet." — Emily, Season 2, Episode 2.

  • "You really want to take all that energy and passion and give it to a man?"— Holly, June's mother, Season 2, Episode 3.

  • "Blessed Be the Froot Loops." — Erin,Season 2, Episode 3.

  • "No mother is ever completely a child's idea of what a mother should be. And I suppose it works the other way around as well." — June, Season 2, Episode 3.

    Photo credit: Hulu
    Photo credit: Hulu


  • "Gilead took your eye. They took my clit. Now we're cows being worked to death, and you're dressing up the slaughterhouse for them. That is a fucking problem!" — Emily, Season 2, Episode 5.

  • "Fuck Aunt Lydia! This place is hell! And covering it up in flowers doesn't change anything!" — Emily, Season 2, Episode 5.

  • "'Prayvaganza!' Not one of the Commander's better efforts if you ask me."— Serena, Season 2, Episode 5.

  • "She may be God's chosen vessel, but I'm surprised he wants to pass along that nose of hers." — Serena, Season 2, Episode 5.

  • "I will not let you grow up in this place. I won't do it. Do you hear me? They do not own you. And they do not own what you will become. Do you hear me? I'm gonna get you out of here." — June, Season 2, Episode 5.

  • "I'm wondering why such an important, brilliant man would take in such a shitty handmaid." — Emily, Season 2, Episode 12.

  • "I think, in this place, you grab love wherever you can find it." — June, Season 2, Episode 12.

  • "Your girlfriend is a badass." — Rita to Nick, Season 2, Episode 13.

    Photo credit: Hulu
    Photo credit: Hulu


  • "The mouth of a woman is a deep pit. He that falls therein will suffer and find the misery of all men. All of you." — Fred, Season 2, Episode 13.

Season 3

  • "Everybody's talking about happily ever after, but there's just after." — Moira, Season 3, Episode 2.

  • "There was a time when women were able to choose. We were a society dying, Aunt Lydia would say, with too much choice. We know the sacrifices you are expected to make, she'd say. It is hard when men revile you." — June, Season 3, Episode 3.

Season 4

  • "I used to think of my body as an instrument for the accomplishment of my will. I could use it run, pick things up, make things happen. There were limits, of course, but my body was nonetheless one with me. It obeyed my commands, mostly without complaint. Not anymore. Now there’s tending to be done. There’s homemade penicillin, mold scraped off rotten fruit, an old Martha recipe. There’s comfrey and marigold oil to make the skin heal faster. Almost bikini season." — June, Season 4, Episode 1.

  • We did what we had to do to survive, to get out, but we’re here, ladies. We won. They tried to fucking destroy us, and we won. —Moira, Season 4, Episode 7.

  • "Do not be deceived. God is not to be mocked. For whatever man sows, so shall he reap. You did this to yourself, Commander." — Nick, Season 4, Episode 10.

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