20 Best ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Quotes

20. June Osborne (Season 1, Episode 8)

"A perfect gift. A girl trapped in a box. She only dances when someone else opens the lid, when someone else winds her up. If this is a story I'm telling, I must be telling it to someone. There's always someone, even when there is no one. I will not be that girl in the box.”

19. Fred Waterford (Season 1, Episode 5)

“Love isn't real. It was never anything more than lust, with a good marketing campaign."

18. Emily Malek (Season 2, Episode 2)

“They can't scare us back into the closet."

17. June Osborne (Season 1, Episode 1)

“I don’t need oranges. I need to scream. I need to grab the nearest machine gun.”

16. Holly Maddox (Season 2, Episode 3)

"You really want to take all that energy and passion and give it to a man?"

15. Moira (Season 3, Episode 2)

"Everybody's talking about happily ever after, but there's just after."

14. Nick Blaine (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.”

13. June Osborne (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 Osborne (Season 2, Episode 3)

12. June Osborne (Season 1, Episode 3)

“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."

11. Janine (Season 2 Episode 8)

“May the force be with you.”

10. June Osborne (Season 1, Episode 4)

“There's no such thing as a sterile man anymore. There's only women who are fruitful and women who are barren.”

9. Erin (Season 2, Episode 3)

“Blessed be the Fruit Loops.”

8. Aunt Lydia  (Season 1, Episode 1)

“The world can be an ugly place. But we cannot wish that ugliness away. We cannot hide from that ugliness.”

7. Serena Joy (Season 1, Episode 6)

"Even the righteous need a little show business."

6. June Osborne (Season 1, Episode 3) 

“They said it would be temporary. Nothing changes instantaneously. In a gradually heating bathtub, you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.”

5. Fred Waterford (Season 1, Episode 5)

“Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse for some.”

4. June Osborne (Season 1, Episode 4)

“There was an Offred before me. She helped me find my way out. She’s dead. She’s alive. She is me.” 

3. Ambassador Castillo, quoting Serena from her book, ‘A Woman’s Place’ (Season 1, Episode 6)

“Never mistake a woman’s meekness for weakness.”

2. June Osborne (Season 1, Episode 10)

"It’s their own fault. They should never have given us uniforms if they didn't want us to be an army.”

1. June Osborne (Season 1, Episode 4)

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.”