Aida

“...-not only did he deplore the waste of words, he detested the moral lassitude with which they were wasted. To him, in whose throat the bone of displacement was forever stuck, it was wrong to talk about nothing when there was a perpetual shortage of words for all the horrible things that happened in the world. It was better to be silent than to say what didn't matter. One had to protect from the onslaught of wasted words the silent place deep inside oneself, where all the pieces could be arranged in a logical manner, where the opponents abided by the rules, where even if you ran out of possibilities there might be a way to turn defeat into victory.”
― Aleksandar Hemon, Best European Fiction 2012

“Only after I saw women who were attracted to distant, condescending, even violent men did I begin to understand that having a distant, condescending, even violent father could make those qualities seem inevitable, even feel like home. Because of my father, only kindness felt like home.”
― Gloria Steinem

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Tri godine trajao je period pretvaranja u kanadskoga drzavljanina. To je vrijeme po misljenju tamosnjih vlasti dovoljno da covjek zaboravi na sve razloge koji ga vuku kuci i da prihvati kako kuca vise ne postoji ili je barem nema tamo gdje si rodjen.”
― Miljenko Jergović, Mama Leone plus