Rita Kuczynski

“I had understood that our knowledge is primarily a practised ritual that serves to conceal our speechlessness in the face of the real. I had learned that the more clearly we construct our sentences, the less we understand about what actually has happened or is still happening.”
― Rita Kuczynski, Wall Flower: A Life on the German Border

“In my head, I had learned to survive. I had learned to provide answers to every question and construct universal propositions, that is statements that are correct from front to back and from back to front, which could enjoy the acclaim of professionals in the field. I had learned to conceal myself behind rational sentences. I had learned to speak the universal language. Out of my own fear of fear, I had become a specialist in the universal. By my own choice, I reduced myself to the bare essentials, the necessary generalities. Indeed, the world was remote. No shouting. No thorn bush that burned. No small light. No voice against another voice. The law of the world lay silently over everything so that I myself seemed innocent of my well-knit lies.”
― Rita Kuczynski, Wall Flower: A Life on the German Border