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Quote by Ajmal, from the book "Borders of the Inner World"

“We are a succession of selves. The person you were at five is different from who you were at fifteen, twentyfive, fifty. ... Sometimes we look back at old versions of ourselves with tenderness, sometimes with embarrassment or regret. ... But those past selves were necessary. They led us here. They were trying to meet their needs with the knowledge they had at the time”

Quote by Ajmal, from the book "Borders of the Inner World"

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Ajmal, from the book "Borders of the Inner World"

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“So when you write a book like "The Handmaid's Tale" in 1985, what you're hoping as a citizen is that it will become obsolete. And in the '90s, right after the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War ended, it appeared that it might become obsolete. But then things turned around and went in the other direction. So it's been quite frightening to watch those kinds of changes. And I think one of the things that has happened is that people of my age and older who remember the effects of the Great Depression and World War II have died out, and younger people don't remember what totalitarianisms were really like. So they get off on collecting, you know, German buttons, but they don't remember what really happened. And when you do remember what really happened, you were quite appalled by what's going on in Ukraine because it's happened before. And you were quite appalled by the polarization in American society, which also happened before in the 1930s. So yes. The patterns that are alarming - and as I've often said, I didn't put anything into "The Handmaid's Tale" that has not happened sometime somewhere before.”

ChangeTotalitarianismAuthoritarianismDystopiaHandmaids TaleHistory Repeating
Author:Margaret Atwood
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