“It is amazing how, when all possibilities seem to be taken away from you, the minutest opening can become a great freedom.”

“...if you could not close a door behind you to take a shit in the city - even if it was just the door to a shared toilet - if this one, most essential freedom was taken away from you, the freedom, that is, to withdraw from other people when necessity called, then all other freedoms were worthless. Then life had no more meaning. Then it would be better to be dead. ”

“When all choice is taken from you, life becomes a game of survival.”

“Freedom ... is about how you can survive after things are taken from you. It is about the prospect of losing what you love and the effort it takes to continue.”

“When you take a woman away from her man, what you get is a woman who can be taken away from her man.”

“Furniture or gold can be taken away from you, but knowledge and a new language can easily be taken from one place to the other, and nobody can take them away from you.”