Clare Boucher

“Zhenevyeva, we often make fun of intellectuals for their doubts, their split personalities, their Hamlet-like indecisiveness. When I was young I despised that side of myself. Now, though, I’ve changed my mind: humanity owes many great books and great discoveries to people who were indecisive and full of doubts; they have achieved at least as much as the simpletons who never hesitate. And when it comes to the crunch, they too are prepared to go to the stake; they stand just as firm under fire as the people who are always strong-willed and resolute.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate (Vintage Classic Russians Series): As heard on BBC Radio 4

“Nationalists prop themselves up by imagining they are living in a circle of virtue outside which shamble those not so blessed, despite their having near-identical beliefs and stews. Perhaps a distinction can be made between patriotism, which is a legitimate, sometimes vexed affection for and pride in the world one grows up in and knows well, and nationalism, where that central space tends to be hollow but given shape by the imagined foibles, vices and plots of those others about which, in practice, one knows little or nothing.”
― Simon Winder, Lotharingia: A Personal History of France, Germany and the Countries In Between

“What constitutes the freedom, the soul of an individual life, is its uniqueness. The reflection of the universe in someone’s consciousness is the foundation of his or her power, but life only becomes happiness, is only endowed with freedom and meaning when someone exists as a whole world that has never been repeated in all eternity. Only then can they experience the joy of freedom and kindness, finding in others what they have already found in themselves.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate (Vintage Classic Russians Series): As heard on BBC Radio 4

“Our identities are given but also made. We can’t choose our parents, but we can choose who we become. ‘Basically I’m Chinese,’ Franz Kafka wrote in a postcard to his fiancée. If I say ‘basically I’m a central European’ I’m not literally claiming descent from the central European Yiddish writer Asch, but declaring an elective affinity.”
― Timothy Garton Ash, Homelands: A Personal History of Europe