Adam Sparkes

“Under the export deals, the friendly firms would buy the raw materials at the Soviet internal price, which was fixed low under the rules of the planned economy, enabling them to reap vast profits when they sold them on at world market prices: the global oil price, for example, was almost ten times higher than the internal Soviet price in those days.”
― Catherine Belton, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took on the West

“She believed that her “quiet traits,” as she called them, had helped her become editor-in-chief.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“All the achievements of the Putin era so far – the economic growth, the increase in incomes, the riches of the billionaires that had turned Moscow into a gleaming metropolis where sleek foreign cars filled the streets and cosy cafés opened on street corners – boiled down to the sharp increase in the oil price during the Putin years, they agree.”
― Catherine Belton, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took on the West

“When you start considering things not as obligations but as opportunities, you start taking advantage of them rather than trying to avoid them.”
― Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think