solomiya

“Kyiv is a bilingual capital, something unusual in Europe and unthinkable in Russia and the United States. Europeans, Russians, and Americans rarely considered that everyday bilingualism might bespeak political maturity, and imagined instead that a Ukraine that spoke two languages must be divided into two groups and two halves. "Ethnic Ukrainians" must be a group that acts in one way, and "ethnic Russians" in another. This is about as true as to say that "ethnic Americans" vote Republican. It is more a summary of a politics that defines people by ethnicity, proposing to them an eternity of grievance rather than a politics of the future.”
― Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

“Those who accept eternity politics do not expect to live longer, happier, or more fruitful lives. They accept suffering as a mark of righteousness if they think that guilty others are suffering more. Life is nasty, brutish, and short; the pleasure of life is that it can be made nastier, more brutish, and shorter for others.”
― Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

“Kiss me again,” he says, drunk and foolish. “Kiss me until I am sick of it.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows.”
― Whitney Houston