Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid’s Tale
Anchor paperback
1998 (1st pub 1985)

On moving in and out of the present action:

Frowning, she tears out three tokens and hands them to me.

[13 paragraphs of backstory and interior monologue]

I take the tokens from Rita’s outstretched hand. (10-11)

On truth (and the end of the story):

When I get out of here, if I’m ever able to set this down, in any form, even in the form of one voice to another, it will be a reconstruction then too, at yet another remove. It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which [sic] can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many. (134)

On seeing the big picture:

What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed against a wall, everything a huge foreground, of details, close-ups, hairs, the weave of the bed sheet, the molecules of the face. Your own skin like a map, a diagram of futility, crisscrossed with tiny roads that lead nowhere. Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be. (143)

On associative writing:

With that man [the man you loved] you wanted it to work, to work out. Working out was also something you did to keep your body in shape, for the man. If you worked out enough, maybe the man would too. Maybe you would be able to work it out together, as if the two of you were a puzzle that could be solved; otherwise, one of you, most likely the man, would go wandering off on a trajectory of his own, taking his addictive body with him and leaving you with bad withdrawal, which you could counteract by exercise. (226-227)