Dace ჯ > Dace's Quotes

“If only I could find my authentic self, make myself a moveable home that could let me exist.”
― J.S. Drangsholt, The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter

“The most dangerous thing of all, and something he wanted to warn me about above all else, the one thing that had consigned whole regiments of unfortunate young people to the twilight world of insanity, was reading books. This objectionable practice had increased among the younger generation, and Dad was more pleased than the could say to not that I had not yet displayed any such tendencies. Lunatic asylums were overflowing with folk who'd been reading too much. Once upon a time they'd been just like you and me, physically strong, straightforward, cheerful, and well balanced. Then they'd started reading. Most often by chance. A bout of flu perhaps, with a few days in bed. An attractive book cover that had aroused some curiosity. And suddenly the bad habit had taken hold. The first book had led to another. Then another, and another, all links in a chain that led straight down into the eternal night of mental illness. It was impossible to stop. It was worse than drugs.

It might just be possible, if you were very careful, to look at the occasional book that could teach you something, such as encyclopedias or repair manuals. The most dangerous kind of book was fiction-- that's where all the brooding was sparked and encouraged. Damnit all! Addictive and risky products like that should only be available in state-regulated monopoly stores, rationed and sold only to those with a license, and mature in age.”
― Mikael Niemi, Popular Music from Vittula

“Even worse was [singing] in English, a language much too lacking in chewability for hard Finnish jaws, so sloppy that only little girls could get top marks in it - sluggish double Dutch, tremulous and damp, invented by mud-sloshing coastal beings who've never needed to struggle, never frozen nor starved. A language for idlers, grass-eaters, couch potatoes, so lacking in resilience that their tongues slop around their mouths like sliced-off foreskins.”
― Mikael Niemi, Popular Music from Vittula

“It’s funny about ‘passing.’ We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it.”
― Nella Larsen, Passing

“Lydia is dubious at first, but if you can’t trust a librarian, who can you trust?”
― Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt

“There were many ways to be alienated from someone, few to actually belong.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“that the Ukrainian choice is a choice between nonexistence and an existence that kills you, and that all of our hapless literature is merely a cry of someone pinned down by a beam in a building after an earthquake—I’m here! I’m still alive!—but, unfortunately, the rescue teams are taking their time and on your own—how the hell are you supposed to get out?”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex

“It takes a lifetime to understand that long ago the grown-ups lied to you, that in fact nothing living, neither a flower, nor a rabbit, nor a person, nor a country, can, in fact, be had: they can only be destroyed, which is the one way to confirm they have been possessed.”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories

“we did not actually warm ourselves with vodka in the cold weather, and remained strictly alcohol-free for the entire three weeks of standing in the streets (that’s what made it clear to these folks that we were different from Russians);”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories

“It occurred to me then that if one went looking for a single image of this revolution, for our own Liberty Leading the People, the young beauty with the orange carnation facing the shields of the riot police would not do no matter how awesome she looked on posters—it would have to be that hunched-over, inconceivably old, indestructible, and uncowed old lady from the Maidan, with her three cupfuls of hot tea—Here, children, warm yourselves, God bless you. Now, that would be the real truth about us, but who’d ever want that old flesh to be their revolution’s allegory?”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories

“The sun hadn’t yet hit the Diablo Valley and so it felt baltic on the road to town.”
― Anna McNuff, Llama Drama: A two-woman, 5,500-mile cycling adventure through South America

“that was the summer they were all afraid the Russians would take Mariupol, that’s all anyone could talk about, that boring grey industrial city that never had anything going for it except its location on the seashore”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories

“secretly, they both rejoiced, gloried in the fact they had a daughter and not a son, that no matter how many waves of mobilization came, none could bring a draft notice to their home, ever.”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories

“And then you ended up in Chechnya, I understand" Sergei continued.
"And what, exactly, did you do there?" Jack inquired.
"Exactly? We would surround the villages, call out the village elders and give them our ultimatum: if you don't give up your arms, we'll raze your village to the ground. At night, all men, including boys, would go away in to the mountains on the request of the village elders. By the time we rolled in, there were no more weapons or rebels. Only the elderly, women and children. And nobody could leave."
"Why not?"
"Because we blocked off the main road, that's why," Fedor said as if he was losing patience with Jack. "On approaching any house, I'd fire inside. If anyone jumped out, woman or child, I mowed them down. The guys behind me would torch the bodies with the flamethrowers to get rid of the evidence. We moved through the village, house by house, firing, throwing grenades into the basements, burning. At one train station we hung ten high school kids, and then six more students that were hiding inside a school. On the outskirts we found about a hundred and thirty people, women, children, old men, anyone who didn't run away. We locked them in a grain elevator, chained the door and then torched it. What we left behind were not ruins, just flat ground."
"Are you saying that the Russian soldiers killed everyone in some village and nobody has heard of it?" Jack asked him incredulously. It was inconceivable that such a barbaric event could take place in today's world without CNN and BBC dissecting it under a microscope.
"Not everyone was killed. Some of the villagers, the ones who survived, were transported to a filtration camp."
"What's a filtration camp?"
"You really don't' know anything, do you? Or are you pretending?"
"Try me," Jack said.
"There is this filtration camp in Osinovka. Each room houses twenty to twenty five prisoners, who sleep on the concrete floor. The guards line them up against the wall and practice karate kicks in the head or in the groin. One of our guys liked to put electricity to the bodies, to see them fry. It takes a long time to get used to that smell. If a prisoner tried to untie their hands, the sergeant would cut them off at the wrists. If a prisoner tried to take off the black blindfold, the sergeant would put out his eyes with his thumbs. He was a piece of work from Archangelsk, our sergeant. During one helicopter ride, he dropped three prisoners because he was bored."
"But how is it possible that the world news did not report any of this?" Jack persisted in knowing.
Fedor raised his eyebrows in a manner that made Jack feel foolish for asking such a question. "Simple. For the next forty-eight hours we didn't allow anyone to enter Samashki, not even the Red Cross. That gave us plenty of time. Our armored vehicles flattened their bones so that the relatives could not identify them later. Exactly what news are you talking about? Are you from this world or not?" Fedor's wolf-like stare made Jack very nervous.”
― Alex Frishberg, The Steel Barons

“How? Well, if a girl has had enough of every man who exists, her only remaining desire could be for a man who doesn’t exist at all . . .”
― Italo Calvino, The Nonexistent Knight

“A little later, Raimbaut reins his horse in the town square. “Have you seen a knight pass?” “Which? Two have passed and you’re the third.” “One rushing after the other.” “Is it true one isn’t a man?” “The second is a woman.” “And the first?” “Nothing.” “What about you?” “Me? I’m . . . I’m a man.” “Thanks be to God!”
― Italo Calvino, The Nonexistent Knight

“The truth. There isn’t any. All we’ve managed to find out about the boundaries of the universe is that it hasn’t got any, and all we know about God is that we don’t know anything. So the only thing a mom who was a priest demanded of her family was simple: that we do our best. We plant an apple tree today, even if we know the world is going to be destroyed tomorrow. We save those we can.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“[..] I learned there [in Mostar] that the distance between civilization and savagery is exceedingly small and this has scared me ever since.”
― J. Maarten Troost, The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific

“The European Community makes the life of the international terrorist much easier because, once inside a member nation, travel to the others is almost free of risk.”
― Daniel Silva, The Mark of the Assassin

“I must say it's the one thing about growing old I don't mind. The eternal craving for female flesh has finally left me in peace.”
― Daniel Silva, The Mark of the Assassin

“Te būs karš. Sakiet man, lūdzami, kurā pusē jūs plānojat karot?”
― Tamāra Horiha Zerņa, Доця

“Arī mani tur guldīs, un tas būs pareizi. Jūs taču ne jau tāpat vien karojat, bet par savu zemi. Un sava zeme tikai tad ir sava, kad mūsējie to pietur no apakšas.”
― Tamāra Horiha Zerņa, Доця

“Well, them cloths are a lot like folks. Ain’t much difference at all. Some of us is more spiffed up than others, some stiffer, and still, some softer. There’s the colorful and dull, ugly and pretty, old, new ’uns. But in the end we’s all fabric, cut from His cloth. Fabric, and just that.” “Yes, ma’am,” I whispered.”
― Kim Michele Richardson, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

“Those that can’t see past a folk’s skin color have a hard difference in them. There’s a fire in that difference. And when they see you, they’ll still see a Blue. No city drug’s gonna change small minds, what they think about peculiarity. For them like-minded folks, there is no redemption for our kind.”
― Kim Michele Richardson, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

“Nespēju atrast tādus vārdus, lai aprakstītu šo naidu. Neviens svētais mūks tik kvēli nelūdzas grūta gavēņa askēzē; neviens zāles stiebriņš tā nesapņo par auksta ūdens lāsi tuksneša vidū; neviens bārenis tā neilgojas pēc mātes rokām, kā es ienīdu, kā es alku un tiecos pēc viņu agonijas.”
― Tamāra Horiha Zerņa, Доця

“Lai Dievs jums nedod dzīvot satricinājumu laikos. Taču kaut ikkatrs zinātu, kā tas ir - atrast atbalstu vislielākā izmisuma brīdī. Ķerstot vēju, nostāties uz zemes.”
― Tamāra Horiha Zerņa, Доця

“Tad pienāca diena, kad lavīna gāzās lejā. Kad spriedze, visus šos mēnešus krājusies, tomēr eksplodēja, un šis sprādziens aizskaloja stutes, kuras tik centīgi bijām būvējuši, sargājot normālas dzīves šķietamību. Nu re, viss. Vairs nav jādomā par peļņu, nav jākaļ plāni remontam vai atvaļinājumam. Nav jāraizējas par vecumdienām un dzīvošano no pensijas, jo, kā mēs skaidrāk par skaidru ieraudzījām, pensijas nebūs. Dīvainā brīvības izjūta, kas pārņem nāvei nolemto; vēl dīvainākā apjausma, ka šis liktenis ir reizē gan nejaušs, gan likumsakarīgs, ka tas ir Dieva sods un neredzēts, neticams pagodinājums.”
― Tamāra Horiha Zerņa, Доця

“BookCrossing helps, you know. It's like a breeding ground for signs, coincidences and help from the universe.”
― Debbie Robson, Crossing Paths

“Otrkārt, tas nozīmēja latviešu valodas trūkumu un to labo sajūtu, kad tev ir blakus kāds, kas izprot tavas latvieša īpatnības, piemēram, mūžīgo kautrēšanos, piekāpšanos, klusēšanu, nereti vienpatību un mīlestību pret kartupeļiem.”
― Linda Riņķe, Paradīzē jeb Kā uzzināt, vai pasaule ir apaļa

“But even the most beautiful stories can have tragic endings. They can also have beautiful endings. Though I suspect any story worth telling has a little bit of both.”
― Brianna Madia, Nowhere for Very Long: The Unexpected Road to an Unconventional Life