You know, it is something very strange: You learn to live with things. For example, something is taken away, like let's say, the freedom of the press or yeah, let's say that your telephones are tapped. So you say "Okay, I can live with that" and then the next day something else, and then you say, "Okay, I will have to live with that too," and so forth. And then after a few months, you realize that you have lost everything. But, you got sort of used to it. And then there's a point when you're talking torture at breakfast time with your kids. And all of a sudden you have this epiphany or this revelation in which you realize what kind of life you are having. —Isabel Letelier, author and wife of the Chilean ambassador to the United States under President Salvador Allende, in an interview in 2003

Tags: * Chile Pinochet Augusto Pinochet torture right-wing fascism Letelier Isabel Letelier civil liberties freedom human+rights