“You see the mistakes of one system—the surveillance—and the mistakes of the other—the inequality—but there’s nothing you could have done in the one and nothing you can do now about the other. She laughs wryly. “And the clearer you see… — Anna Funder Copy Share Image
At the end of our lives it is our loves we remember most, because they are what shaped us. We have grown to be… — Anna Funder Copy Share Image
“The blue-eyed rabbi in our village at Samotschin used to talk to me as though I were a grown person, even when I was… — Anna Funder Copy Share Image
“History was so quickly remade, and so successfully, that it can truly be said that the easterners did not feel then, and do not… — Anna Funder Copy Share Image
“The penalties for being an accessory to the attempt to flee the [GDR] were greater than the crime of trying to flee itself.” — Anna Funder Copy Share Image
“Such applications were sometimes granted because the GDR, unlike any other eastern European country, could rid itself of malcontents by ditching them into West… — Anna Funder Copy Share Image
“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… — Anna Funder Copy Share Image
“Lately, a study has suggested that depressed people have a more accurate view of reality, though this accuracy is not worth a bean because… — Anna Funder Copy Share Image
“Julia and her family, like many others in the GDR, trod this line between seeing things for what they were in the GDR, and… — Anna Funder Copy Share Image
The cynic sees only cynicism, the depressive can taint creation with one glance — Anna Funder Copy Share Image
“And I think about those Stasi men. They would never in their lives have imagined that they would cease to exist and that their… — Anna Funder Copy Share Image
Per capita the East Germans drank more than twice as much as their West German counterparts. — Anna Funder Copy Share Image
Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so. — Anna Funder Copy Share Image