The Handmaid's Tale
Wednesdays on HuluThe Handmaid's Tale Quotes
Mark: Nick was an eye. He's a commander now. Someone like that defecting from Gilead? Big impact. You can make one, too. You could. You know that. After Angel's Flight, after your testimony against Waterford, you should step up, put your power to use.
June: I don't feel comfortable doing that right now, Mark.
Mark: Fair enough. What about Nick? I could set up a meeting. I could set it up today. Be nice to have a win.
June: Yeah. Yeah, set it up.
June: Hello.
Joseph: Um, I'm sorry, June. I really am. All this bloodshed, it's, it's exactly what I was trying to avoid.
June: Soldiers are dead; you fuckin' slaughtered them.
Joseph: They invaded my country.
June: To save our children.
Joseph: Citizens of Gilead.
June: They were stolen from us! You know that!
Joseph: I gave you the chance to be with Hannah. You threw your lot in with the Americans!
June: Is that why you called, to blame me?
Joseph: No. I, I called because you can still come to New Bethlehem.
June: Why would you let me do that?
Joseph: Hannah's a symbol now. Like it or not, so are you. So, after last night, it would be even more effective if June Osborn chose to return to Gilead to be close to her child, close to Nick, too.
June: What do you mean?
Joseph: Nick will be there. You'd be neighbors, you could buy cups of sugar from each other, or whatever the kids are calling it these days.
June: Do you think you can just dangle Nick in front of me, and I'll just do whatever the fuck you want??
Joesph: I think it's a good deal, and I think you should take it. But there's one thing. Uh, I need you to go public. Call the failed mission a foolish act of aggression.
June: What? No, I'm not gonna say that.
Joseph: Why not? It's the truth. The Americans did what they always did. They put Hannah, they put all of those girls in real danger.
June: I cannot make Gilead look like the victim here. Joseph, it is an evil fucking country. I can't do that.
Joseph: I'm trying to fix it from the inside.
June: You are still part of it! You are one of them. It's even worse cause I know you know better.
Joseph: I'm doing what I can, step by step. It's what I promised Eleanor.
June: Eleanor hated you. She couldn't stand the sight of you. She was so broken and so ashamed of the man that she loved that she'd rather be dead. I watched her die. I did, I watched her die, and I did nothing, nothing.
Joseph: I knew, I knew you had something to do with it, but Eleanor would still want me to help you with Hannah, help you come back.
June: I want her here! I want my baby here. Safe and free. Please.
Joseph: It's never gonna happen.
June: THEN GO FUCK YOURSELF!
Gilead's gonna Gilead.
Joseph
Serena: What am I supposed to do now?
June: Go back to the Wheelers.
Serena: How? How do you go and live in a house with a woman who's trying to steal your baby?
June: Are you seriously asking me that?
Serena: How did you ever, how did you ever live with me?
June: [laughs] Um, OK. OK, I'll tell you. Here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna go back in there, and you are going to act like a handmaid, but the entire time, you will be plotting against them and planning your revenge.
Serena: Is that what you did?
June: Look at what happened to Fred, and look at you now. [she gets up to leave]
Serena: Just, what would you do if you were me?
June: Listen to me. You cannot help your child if you're not with him. I would go back.
Turns out, after all this, I guess I'm a better Christian than you.
June
Serena: I'm not going to live in the same house as my child's kidnappers.
Joseph: Do you have an irony deficiency?
Serena: I don't give a damn. I'm not a handmaid.
Joseph: America is dying. It's an idea that has outlived its usefulness.
June: You said you had news about Hannah.
Joseph: First, hear me out. You need to understand that everything you value, all the things you're clinging to, democracy, liberty, justice, all that feel-good crap defined by a bunch of slave owners talking about how all men are created equal, all of that collapsed under the weight of late-term capitalism and rampant consumerism. It broke our pretty little planet and almost ended the human race, and Gilead, for all of our faults, we fixed that particular problem. We're having babies again. Unfortunately, I had to use religious nutjobs as a delivery system, and I underestimated their depravity, but uh, it was triage, and it worked. So now, with our success, we can afford to let up a little.
June: Are you gonna let Hannah out?
Joseph: Not, I can't. But I can let you in.
Alanis: That's not how cried out works, Serena. It requires a certain amount of mental toughness.
Serena: [whispers] Mental toughness, huh. [out loud] Right. I have overthrown a country, and I have, against all odds, given birth to a very healthy baby, and not once have I lacked for mental toughness.
Alanis: Are you angry with me, Serena?
Serena: Noah is one month old. He is far too young to be crying it out!
Can't we all agree, gentlemen, that it's embarrassing to be running a country in which people are constantly trying to escape?
Commander Lawrence
Serena: June, why didn't you kill me?
June: I don't... you've been the one waving the gun around.
Serena: Not today. At the information center, the protest. You had a gun.
June: Yeah.
Serena: Why didn't you kill me? Why Fred and not me?
June: I didn't want to. [She smiles]
Serena: I imagined this moment so many times. I always imagined that he would be here, Fred. He looks like him.
June: They say that they always look like their dads at first. It's evolutionary so that the dads don't kill them, you know?
Serena: Evolution? Do you think he's gonna be like him?
June: Depends.
Serena: On what?
June: On who raises him. And what kind of person they want him to become. And what you teach him. And on what you tell him is his to take.
Serena: I want him to have everything.
June: We all want that for them, Serena.
Serena: June, I think God sent you to me today.
June: You came after me.
Serena: What if he guided my hand to save you so that you can save my baby like an angel?
June: Bullshit.
Serena: There are avenging angels that rain down sulfur and fire from the lord. Rejoice with him, oh heavens, for he will avenge the blood of his children and take righteous vengeance on his adversaries. There are still angels. Maybe that's what you are for me.
June: [shakes her head] Is that what you think of me?
Serena: And when she could no longer hide him, she built for him an arc of bullrushes and placed this child therein. Maybe I'm the arc, June. Maybe I'm the vessel. I carried my baby and delivered him, and I held him. Maybe that's all that was meant for me in this life. Maybe it's God's will. [June takes Noah]
June: God's will. A vessel. That's what you thought I was. We were. Who we were, where we came from, what we wanted, none of that mattered to you, to any of you.
Serena: I'm so sorry.
June: I don't care that you're sorry. We mattered. We were, we are people. We have lives. And that's why I'm gonna save yours, Serena, because this isn't Gilead, and I am not you.
Serena: I don't deserve to be saved.
June: It's not for you. It's for him. Look at him. Look at your baby. You are the only person in the whole world that he knows. You are the only familiar smell, you are the only voice he recognizes, you love him, and you wanted him so much. You're his mother, and he belongs with you. That is God's will. Do you understand me?
It's funny how every tiny baby you see makes you think you've never seen a baby before.
June
