Natalia Timofeeva’s Reviews > Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History > Status Update

“How bizarre, I thought, that all these rell-gious zealots disagreed with one another about what exactly God looked like, and yet all believed that parts of us will survive after we die. If there was one thing that could convince us children of the irrationality of religion, of the ridiculous nature of belief in the existence of God, it was the idea that there could be a life after the one we had. “

“Fortunately, with the help of the Party, we could finally understand that God was just an invention to make us afraid and reliant on those who pretended to have the power to translate the word of God, or to explain his rules.”

In the end, my grandmother said, we are always in charge of our fate. ‘Biography' was crucial to knowing the limits of your world but, once you knew those limits, you were free to choose and you became responsible for your decisions. There would be gains and there would be losses. You had to avoid being flattered by victories and learn how to accept defeat.

«Success was always due to the right people making the right choices, fighting for hope when it seemed justified, and interpreting the facts in such a way as to distinguish hope from illusion.»

«I come from a family of what my teacher Nora used to call 'intellectuals. "There are too many children of intellectuals in this class, she would say in school, with a vaguely disapproving look on her face. 'An intellec-tual, my father reassured me, is simply someone with a university education. Don't worry, though. Ultimately, everyone is a worker. We all live in a working-class state?»