Em

“It occurred to me then that if one went looking for a single image of this revolution, for our own Liberty Leading the People, the young beauty with the orange carnation facing the shields of the riot police would not do no matter how awesome she looked on posters—it would have to be that hunched-over, inconceivably old, indestructible, and uncowed old lady from the Maidan, with her three cupfuls of hot tea—Here, children, warm yourselves, God bless you. Now, that would be the real truth about us, but who’d ever want that old flesh to be their revolution’s allegory?”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories

“When something frightens them, they do not run but go to face it. They take up arms and go to the front. They are not afraid to live, and to die, too, if they have to: they already know that, too is a part of life.”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories

“It seems reasonable to assume that the minute Irma walks into Venera and Goderdzi's home she will take off her while wedding dress, take up the yoke of domestic duties and work like a mule until her dying breath.”
― Nana Ekvtimishvili, The Pear Field

“...after three years of war, a death from disease, even if it befell a public figure, had ceased being an event worth talking about.”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories