Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-02-26:

"The citizen lives in each of us. In the days of Brezhnev, Andropov, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, I was constantly trying to suppress the responsible citizen in me. I told myself that I was, after all, an artist. As a storyteller I was influenced by the Moscow underground, where it was common to be apolitical. This was one of our favorite anecdotes: As German troops marched into Paris, Picasso sat there and drew an apple. That was our attitude -- you must sit there and draw your apple, no matter what happens around you. I held fast to that principle until I was 50. Now the citizen in me has come to life." -- Vladimir Sorokin, Russian author, discussing why he felt the need to write his novel "Day of the Oprichnik", which portrays an authoritarian Russia ruled by members of the secret police.

[ http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,463860,00.html]

(submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach)