Bryan

“By choosing Christianity rather than Islam, Volodymyr cast Rus’s ambitions for ever in Europe rather than Asia, and by taking Christianity from Byzantium rather than Rome he bound the future Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussians together in Orthodoxy, fatally dividing them from their Catholic neighbours the Poles.”
― Anna Reid, Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine

“Since then, many have tried to describe what it feels like to endure the disintegration of one’s entire civilization, to watch the buildings and landscapes of one’s childhood collapse, to understand that the moral world of one’s parents and teachers no longer exists and that one’s respected national leaders have failed.”
― Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

“I think television with two channels - one on a political speech, on the other a Russian film -- must be the cheapest and most inhuman means to effectively make people stupid.”
― Iva Pekárková, Truck Stop Rainbows

“I've never collected souvenirs. But if I could, I'd save the white of beautiful nights in a little pouch on my chest, the way Indians keep the scents of the prairie.”
― Iva Pekárková, Truck Stop Rainbows