“ I want to be free. I’m not asking for superficial freedom, the freedom to travel, to leave this house (even though that would be unimaginably blissful). I’d rather feel free inside—to choose my own path, never to waver, not to follow the swarm. I hate this community spirit they go on and on about. The Germans, the French, the Gaullists, they all agree on one thing: you have to love, think, live with other people, as part of a state, a country, a political party. Oh, my God! I don’t want to! I’m just a poor useless woman; I don’t know anything but I want to be free! Slaves, she continued thinking. We’re becoming slaves; the war scatters us in all directions, takes away everything we own, snatches the bread from out of our mouths; let me at least retain the right to decide my own destiny, to laugh at it, defy it, escape it if I can. A slave? Better to be a slave than a dog who thinks he’s free as he trots along behind his master.
Irène Némirovsky, Suite Francaise (via hateshiploveship)
better free than ignorant
(via childrenoftheday)
1 month ago