For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous. Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings - all the human actions we think of as essential to a character - had be censored by the self lest they be punished by the state.
“You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.”
“I am interested in the gap between what people say and what they think - the undiscovered world of people's lives. Lives of quiet desperation.”