The cynic sees only cynicism, the depressive can taint creation with one glance
Why are some things easier to remember the more time has passed since they occurred?
I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going.
He can switch from one view to another with frightening ease. I think it is a sign of being accustomed to such power that the truth does not matter because you cannot be contradicted.
one does not remember one’s own pain. It is the suffering of others that undoes us
For anyone to understand a regime like the GDR, the stories of ordinary people must be told. Not just the activists or the famous writers. You have to look at how normal people manage with such things in their pasts.
Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so.
When I got out of prison, I was basically no longer human,’ Miriam says.
Ten days is time enough to die, to be born, to fall in love and to go mad. Ten days is a very long time.
Betrayal clearly has its own reward: the small deep human satisfaction of having one up on someone else. It is the psychology of the mistress, and this regime used it as fuel.
Miriam is upset. Her voice is stretched and I can’t look at her. Perhaps they beat something out of her she didn’t get back.
She is brave and strong and broken all at once. As she speaks it is as if her existence is no longer real to her in itself, more like a living epitaph to a life that was.
There are no people who are whole” he says. “Everyone has issues of their own to deal with. Mine might be a little harder, but the main thing is how on deals with them.
In my experience, it is entirely possible to watch something happen and not to see it at all.