57 Quotes by Anna Funder

  • Author Anna Funder
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    The penalties for being an accessory to the attempt to flee the [GDR] were greater than the crime of trying to flee itself.

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  • Author Anna Funder
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    When I got out of prison, I was basically no longer human,′ Miriam says.

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  • Author Anna Funder
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    At the end of our lives it is our loves we remember most, because they are what shaped us. We have grown to be who we are around them, as around a stake.

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  • Author Anna Funder
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    I wonder, now, about interrogation chambers: why do they think bright light brings the truth out of people? They should try the seduction of shadows, where you cannot watch your words hit their target.

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  • Author Anna Funder
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    Memory, like so much else, is unreliable. Not only for what it hides and what it alters, but also for what it reveals.

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  • Author Anna Funder
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    Can you rework your past, the grit that rubs in you, until it is shiny and smooth as a pearl?

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  • Author Anna Funder
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    We don’t catch hold of an idea, rather the idea catches hold of us and enslaves us and whips us into the arena so that we, forced to be gladiators, fight for it.

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  • Author Anna Funder
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    The human brain cannot encompass total absence. Like infinity, it is simply not something that the organ runs to. The space someone leaves must be filled, so we dream forever of those who are no longer here. Our minds make them live again.

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  • Author Anna Funder
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    And I think about those Stasi men. They would never in their lives have imagined that they would cease to exist and that their offices would be a museum. A museum!

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