Home > Work > City of Angels or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud
1 " The real question is: How sturdy and solid is the floor our civilization stands on? How many lives with no prospects, shattered and senseless, can it bear the weight of before it cracks somewhere or other, splits at the joints? "
― Christa Wolf , City of Angels or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud
2 " Night thoughts have a different color than day thoughts, a different slant, more than anything else they know all the secret paths and chinks in the armor they can take advantage of to force their way into consciousness. "
3 " Now writing is just working your way toward the border that the innermost secret draws around itself, and to cross that line would mean self-destruction. But writing is also an attempt to respect the borderline only for the truly innermost secret, and bit by bit to free the taboos around that core, difficult to admit as they are, from their prison of unspeakability. Not self-destruction but self-redemption. Not being afraid of unavoidable suffering. "
4 " Every system of power in the world has a vested interest in weakening the individuality of its subjects and tries to weaken or it possible completely extinguish it. "
5 " I didn't know then, and would not have believed, that sympathy gets weaker when excessive claims are made upon it. That it doesn't grow back to the same extent after you give it out. That people, without realizing it or wanting it, develop protective techniques against self-destructive sympathy. "
