Linda

“One day, many years after the siege was lifted and the war was over, two nutritionists met by chance. They introduced themselves. One, Alexei Bezzubov, had worked at Leningrad’s Vitamin Institute, seeking out new sources of protein for the hungry. The other, as it turned out, was Ernst Ziegelmeyer, deputy quartermaster of Hitler’s army, the man who’d been assigned to calculate how quickly Leningrad would fall without food deliveries. Now these two men met in peace: the one who had tried to starve a city, and the other who had tried to feed it. Ziegelmeyer pressed Bezzubov incredulously: “However did you hold out? How could you? It’s quite impossible! I wrote a deposition that it was physically impossible to live on such a ration.” Bezzubov could not provide a scientific, purely nutritive answer. There was none. Instead, he “talked of faith in victory, of the spiritual reserves of Leningraders, which had not been accounted for in the German professor’s”
― M.T. Anderson, Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad

“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“Strangely enough, doctors and nurses noted that activity actually prolonged life, when it should have shortened it. Those who lay down and tried to conserve energy often were the ones who trailed off and died first.”
― M.T. Anderson, Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad

“Being caught by the lord of speech may start with just a reasonable conviction about what we feel to be true. However, if we find ourselves becoming righteously indignant, that’s a sure sign that we’ve gone too far and that our ability to effect change will be hindered.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times