#communist

To be a member of the Communist Party is to have a taste of the police state. It is a diluted taste but is bitter and unforgettable. ↗

— Elia Kazan

#communist #communist party #diluted #member #party

And also they were absolutely brilliant in one way, you know: they knew how effective is not to punish somebody who is guilty; what Communist Party members could afford to do was mind-boggling: they could do practically anything they wanted - steal, you know, lie, whatever. ↗

— Milos Forman

#afford #also #anything #brilliant #communist

For years after I resigned, I was still faithful to their way of thinking. But not in the American Communists. ↗

— Elia Kazan

#american #communists #faithful #i #resigned

I hate the Communists and have for many years and don't feel right about giving up my career to defend them. I will give up my film career if it is in the interests of defending something I believe in, but not this. ↗

— Elia Kazan

#believe #career #communists #defend #defending

I joined the Communist Party late in 1934. I got out a year and a half later. ↗

— Elia Kazan

#communist party #got #half #i #joined

I was even superior to the Communists and when they didn't go along with me, I quit them. ↗

— Elia Kazan

#communists #even #go #i #i quit

The Communists automatically violated the daily practices of democracy to which I was accustomed. ↗

— Elia Kazan

#automatically #communists #daily #democracy #i

Because if you lived, as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and then 20 years in communist totalitarianism, you would certainly realize how precious freedom is, and how easy it is to lose your freedom. ↗

— Milos Forman

#certainly #communist #did #easy #freedom

Don't listen to what the Communists say, but look at what they do. ↗

— Nguyen Van Thieu

#listen #look #say

Chang-bo took to his bed, or rather to the quilts on the floor that was all they had left. His legs swelled up like balloons with what Mrs. Song had come to recognize as edema — fluid retention brought on by starvation. He talked incessantly about food. He spoke of the tofu soups his mother made him as a child and an unusually delicious meal of steamed crab with ginger that Mrs. Song had cooked for him when they were newlyweds. He had an uncanny ability to remember details of dishes she had cooked decades earlier. He was sweetly sentimental, even romantic, when he spoke about their meals together. He would take her hand in his own, his eyes wet and cloudy with the mist of his memories. “Come, darling. Let’s go to a good restaurant and order a nice bottle of wine,” he told his wife one morning when they were stirring on the blankets. They hadn’t eaten in three days. Mrs. Song looked at her husband with alarm, worried that he was hallucinating. She ran out the door to the market, moving fast and forgetting all about the pain in her back. She was determined to steal, beg — whatever it took — to get some food for her husband. She spotted her older sister selling noodles. Her sister wasn’t faring well — her skin was flaked just like Chang-bo’s from malnutrition — so Mrs. Song had resisted asking her for help, but now she was desperate, and of course, her sister couldn’t refuse. “I’ll pay you back,” Mrs. Song promised as she ran back home, the adrenaline pumping her legs. Chang-bo was curled up on his side under the blanket. Mrs. Song called his name. When he didn’t respond, she went to turn him over — it wasn’t diffcult now that he had lost so much weight, but his legs and arms were stiff and got in the way. Mrs. Song pounded and pounded on his chest, screaming for help even as she knew it was too late. ↗

— Barbara Demick

#north-korean-famine #change