Polina

“It was easy to root for the winners. No, he liked the punch-drunk ones, half walking at mile twenty-three, tongues flapping like Labradors. Tumbling across the finish line by hook or by crook, feet pounded to bloody meat in their Nikes. The laggards and limpers who weren’t running the course but running deep into their character—down into the cave to return to the light with what they found. By the time they got to Columbus Circle, the TV crews have split, the cone cups of water and Gatorade litter the course like daisies in a pasture, and the silver space blankets twist in the wind. Maybe they had someone waiting for them and maybe they didn’t. Who wouldn’t celebrate that?”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“Сміливі завжди мають щастя.”
― Іван Багряний, Тигролови

“The boys could have been many things had they not been ruined by that place. Doctors who cured diseases or perform brain surgery, inventing shit that saves lives. Run for president. All those lost geniuses - sure not all of them were geniuses, Chickie Pete for example was not solving special relativity - but they had been denied even the simple pleasure of being ordinary. Hobbled and handicapped before the race even began, never figuring out how to be normal.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“Ліпше умерти раз, умерти гордо, з незломаною душею, аніж повзати на колінях і вмерти двічі - морально й фізично. Але в першім варіанті ще є шанс взагалі не вмерти.”
― Ivan Bahriany, Сад Гетсиманський