Dorin

“Somebody betrayed us... The Germans learned the location of our partisan troop. They surrounded the forest from all sides. We were hiding in the deep woods, hiding in the swamps where the torturers did not go [...] A radio operator was with us. She gave birth recently. The baby was hungry... Wanting the breast... But the mother is starving, she has no milk, and the baby is crying. The Germans are nearby... With dogs... If the dogs hear the baby, we're all dead. All of us - thirty people... Do you understand? We make a decision... Nobody dares to tell her the commader's order, but the mother guesses it herself. She puts the bundle with the baby into the water and holds it there for a long time... The baby does not cry... Not a sound... And we cannot lift our eyes. We cannot look at the mother or at each other”
― Svetlana Alexievich, War's Unwomanly Face

“DUMBLEDORE: Harry, there is never a perfect answer in this messy, emotional world. Perfection is beyond the reach of humankind, beyond the reach of magic. In every shining moment of happiness is that drop of poison: the knowledge that pain will come again. Be honest to those you love, show your pain. To suffer is as human as to breathe.”
― Jack Thorne, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two

“- Te ascult, zic. Deci, prostia Românului e...
- Spre deosebire de a Rusului – care e... precum le e ţara: nesfârşită; spre deosebire de a Neamţului, în colţuri, cubică, bine gospodărită, poţi să crezi că-i o maşinărie de-a lor... Prostia noastră românească e… proastă, gălăgioasă, măruntă, Românul vrea să arate ca un cocoş plin de pene, de ţănţoşenie şi când acolo e un vrăbioi jumulit şi de-râs... Atunci mi-am zis că prostia-naţională e un fel de calitate, popor mare e acela în stare de tâmpenii mari, monumentale, de prostii istorice – şi cum, în capul meu, istoria e sora geamănă a geografiei, îmi spun că o mare prostie are nevoie de mari spaţii, de... spaţiu-vital, de sute de mii de kilometri pătraţi, ca să se exprime – or Românul rămâne, şi în prostie, mărunt, meschin, tâmpit pe centimetru pătrat, prost în bătătură, idiot în ogradă… (Ediţia II, Editura Albastros, Bucureşti, 1990).”
― Paul Goma, Din calidor

“You know what, sometimes it seems to me we're living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what's good and what isn't, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves... And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead