I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently.
Herta MullerRead
Some people speak and sing and walk and sit and sleep and silence their homesickness, for a long time, and to no avail. Some say that over time homesickness loses its specific content, that it starts to smolder and only then becomes all-consuming, because it’s no longer focused on a concrete home. I am one of the people who say that.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the nature of homesickness and how it evolves over time.
Herta Müller explores the experience of homesickness, suggesting that while many try to ignore or suppress their longing for home through various activities, this feeling often persists and transforms over time. The quote highlights that homesickness can shift from a specific longing for a place to a more generalized sense of loss, becoming an overwhelming emotional state that consumes a person's thoughts and feelings.
In practice
During a farewell speech, one might use this quote to express the deep feelings associated with leaving a cherished place.
Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.
What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.
Do not bury our glorious orthodoxy in the treacherous pit of a spurious conservatism.
Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress.
Never underestimate the human capacity for wishful thinking and willful blindness,' said Miles. Such as a whole society of people who became so wrapped up in avoiding death, they forgot to be alive?
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