I say unto you that suffering is not holding you, you are holding suffering
In this environment it was a simple matter for The Republic to maintain its structure. People did as they were told because they were working together, focused on a common threat, a shared enemy. But time passes. Fear becomes a memory. Terror becomes routine; it loses its grip.
You think you have a memory; but it has you!
I haven't had the time to plan returning to the scene because I haven't left it.
In 1952, I had gone to England on a literary pilgrimage, but what I also saw, even at that distance from the blitz, were bombed-out ruins and an enervated society, while the continent was still, psychologically, in the grip of its recent atrocities.
You don’t just go to somebody and say, ‘I’m a better person because you’re in my head.
Fear owns me because I let it. Because I obsess over it, name it, raise it, and nurture it to become perfect. It is one of the few things in my life that I can control.
A woman could do that to you - reach that place in your soul where the best and worst of you was kept. And once she was there, she owned that place and never left.
