Quotes from Anna Funder

Some people are comfortable talking about their lives, as if they can make sense of the progression of random events that made them what they are. This involves a kind of forward-looking faith in life; a conviction that cause and effect are linked, and that they are themselves more than the sum of their past.

Mielke and Honecker grew up fighting the real evil of Nazism. And they kept on fighting the west, which they saw as Nazism's successor, for forty-five years after the war ended.

In August, the Hungarians cut the barbed wire at their border with Austria, creating the first hole in the Eastern Bloc.

The judge, for instance, who signed the warrant for Charlie's arrest that last time he went into remand is still on the bench.

She says that in January 1990 when the Berliners saw the smoke coming out of the chimneys they came here to protest. They brought bricks and rocks and built a symbolic wall around the building, to get the Stasi to stop burning the files. She says it is extraordinary that, with all those stones, not one was thrown and that, conversely, not one shot was fired from this building.

La guerra sembrava qualcosa di sacro ed eroico, proprio come ci avevano insegnato a scuola. Qualcosa che dava un senso alle nostre vite e ci rendeva puri. Cos'avevamo fatto per aver bisogno di una purificazione simile?

In Dresden once, on a bridge over the river Elbe, I saw a plaque commemorating the liberation of the East Germans from their Nazi oppressors by their brothers the Russians

anti-fascist protective measure'. I have always been fond of this term which has something of the prophylactic about it, protecting easterners from the western disease of shallow materialism. It obeys all the logic of locking up free people to keep them safe from criminals.

In Hitler's Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for every 2000 citizens, and in Stalin's USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people. In the GDR, there was one Stasi officer or informant for every sixty-three people. If part-time informers are included, some estimates have the ratio as high as one informer for every 6.5 citizens. Everywhere

In my section,' he says, 'they were all journalists. We used them to start scandals, or break open political cover-ups. We funded them, and we fed them scoops.

I wonder how it worked inside the Stasi: who thought up these blackmail schemes? Did they send them up the line for approval? Did pieces of paper come back initialled and stamped 'Approved': the ruining of a marriage, the destruction of a career, the imprisonment of a wife, the abandonment of a child? Did they circulate internal updates: 'Five new and different ways to break a heart'?

I once saw a note on a Stasi file from early 1989 that I would never forget. In it a young lieutenant alerted his superiors to the fact that there were so many informers in church opposition groups at demonstrations that they were making these groups appear stronger than they really were. In one of the most beautiful ironies I have ever seen, he dutifully noted that, by having swelled the ranks of the opposition, the Stasi was giving the people heart to keep demonstrating against them.

What surprises me about living here is that, no matter how much is taken out, this linoleum palace continues to contain all the necessities for life, at the same time as it refuses to admit a single thing, either accidentally or arranged, of beauty or joy. In this, I think, it is much like East Germany itself.

Today I walk from my place up Brunnenstrasse, past Frau Paul's tunnel to Bernauer Strasse where the Wall was. There is a new museum here. Its greatest exhibit is opposite: a full-size reconstructed section of the Wall, complete with freshly built and neatly raked death strip, for tourists.

Per zio Erwin c'era un sorta di curriculum dell'esistenza in cui le cose da fare erano state stabilite dagli altri. Le soddisfazioni e i piaceri della vita non consistevano tanto nel farle, quanto nello spuntarle dalla lista.

Un tempo avevo occhi molto buoni. Quello che hanno visto è un altro discorso. L'esperienza mi ha insegnato che si può guardar succedere qualcosa senza nemmeno vederlo.

Many people withdrew into what they called 'internal emigration'. They sheltered their secret inner lives in an attempt to keep something of themselves from the authorities.

Lately, a study has suggested that depressed people have a more accurate view of reality, though this accuracy is not worth a bean because it is depressing, and depressed people live shorter lives. Optimists and believers are happier and healthier in their unreal worlds. Julia

Sono un recipiente di ricordi in un mondo che è dimenticanza.

She is brave and strong and broken all at once.

What chutzpah, to write my life story at forty! Or a bad omen. Perhaps, having written it down, I now feel the life is done. Dora would have made me snap out of it. There are some people just the thought of whom makes us behave better. [Toller]

It is this prospect, of something freshly imagined, some new possibility of belief, that America holds out to all comers. — Toller

A volte l'uomo è preso da un senso di nausea, fisica o spirituale, che lo priva di ogni volontà e determinazione e lo spinge, fiacco e allo sbando, a desiderare la morte. Allora sprofonda irresistibilmente verso la distruzione, verso un folle tuffo nel caos.

Il problema della vita è che puoi procedere solo alla cieca, in un'unica direzione. La memoria ha delle idee tutte sue; carpisce elementi da gni quando e cerca di metterli insieme. Ti sorprende da tutte le angolazioni, con tutto quello che sei venuto a sapere in seguito, e ti comunica le novità.