JoAnna

“He was not yet in the Church, but already a sin without a name had occurred to him. Ordinarily, the thought might give him pleasure. He remembered Nunes saying that a man must come into the Church on his own intellectual level. And in a horror, remote but clear, saw that the more intelligent a man was, the more various the sins he was capable of committing.”
― Harry Sylvester, Dayspring

“He saw himself as a hated prier into the homes of strangers, a kind of intellectual charlatan rationalizing his own prurience into scientific curiosity; someone at once lower and more pretentious than a professional social worker.”
― Harry Sylvester, Dayspring

“It was such a nice feeling to know that someone was looking after you... that someone wanted you... that you were important to someone.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside

“The individual citizen had no chance to voice his protest or his opinion, not even his fear. He could only leave the country - and so people did. Those who used 'I' instead of 'we' in their language had to escape. It was this fatal difference in grammar that divided them from the rest of their compatriots. As a consequence of this 'us', no civic society developed. The little there was, in the form of small, isolated, and marginalised groups, was soon swallowed up by the national homogenisation that did not permit any differences, any individualism. As under communism, individualism was punished - individuals speaking out against the war, or against nationalism, were singled out as 'traitors'.
How does a person who is a product of a totalitarian society learn responsibility, individuality, initiative? by saying 'no'. But this begins with saying 'I', thinking 'I' and doing 'I' - in public as well as in private. Individuality, the first-person singular, always existed under communism, it was just exiled from public and political life and exercised in private. Thus the terrible hypocrisy with which we learned to live in order to survive is having its backlash now: it is very difficult to connect the private and public 'I'; to start believing that an individual opinion, initiative, or vote could make a difference. There is still too big a danger that the citizen will withdraw into an anonymous, safe 'us'.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Café Europa: Life After Communism