In this county, we had to walk, eat, sleep and love in fear. Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums

  “No cities can grow in a dictatorship, because everything stays small when it’s being watched.”
― Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums 

“If only the right person would have to leave, everyone else would be able to stay in the country.”
― Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums  

“At a time I used to think that in a world without guards people would walk differently from the way we do in our country. Where people are allowed to think and write differently, I thought, they will also walk differently.”
― Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums 

“We laughed a lot, to hide it from each other. But fear always finds an out. If you control your face, it slips into your voice. If you manage to keep a grip on your face and your voice, as if they were dead wood, it will slip out through your fingers. It will pass through your skin and lie there. You can see it lying around on objects close by.”
― Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums   

“No words are adequate for the suffering caused by hunger. To this day I have to show hunger that I escaped his grasp. Ever since I stopped having to go hungry, I literally eat life itself. And when I eat, I am locked up inside the taste of eating. For sixty years, ever since I came back from the camp, I have been eating against starvation.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel