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

“Meals were the daily bane of my existence; not so much the constant work of picking, cleaning, chopping, cooking—though those activities were fairly baneful in themselves—but primarily the never-ending chore of remembering what we had on hand, and balancing the effort required to make it edible against the knowledge of what might spoil if we didn’t eat it right away.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Go Tell the Bees that I Am Gone

“...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

“On principle, I don't want to teach English. It's a slippery slope. You agree to teach English and then suddenly you're forty-five, with a fanny pack and Teva sandals, still teaching English, except inexplicably you have become a white male and you have a hot Chinese girlfriend and everyone else thinks you're a creep.”
― Jessica Pan, Graduates in Wonderland: The International Misadventures of Two (Almost) Adults