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She doesn't know how to speak of her fear, the words seem to come unstuck from her lips painfully and then, hard and rounded like pebbles, scatter on the table, falling into the ashtray, into the coffee cup which, when she is not smoking, she grips tightly in both hands. I try to catch them, to string them together with the words she's still holding inside herself, because by now she's frightened of their very sound.

The communist state never allowed development of a civil society; it oppressed ethnic, national and religious beliefs, permitting only class identification; and in the end, communist leaders manipulated these beliefs, playing one nationality against another to keep themselves in power for as long as they could. Even if the price was war. (P.50)

«حس می‌کنم دارم به لبه‌ی یک پرتگاه نزدیک می‌شوم، به یک مغاک. غرق در آشوبی از احساسات شده‌ام؛ احساساتی که نمی‌شناسمشان اما می‌دانم که خطرناکند، می‌دانم باید آن‌ها را از خودم دور کنم وگرنه خیلی دیر می‌شود.»

«حس می‌کنم تراژدی این کشور دیگر در کلمات نمی‌گنجد.»

Another friend in Zagreb decided to give up listening to the radio, watching TV or reading newspapers. He cut himself off from all information, all news. At first it had thought it was mere escapism to decide to ignore the war, as if it had nothing to do with his own life. But now I see it was his last, desperate attempt at staying normal, because the war has already poisoned his existence...

War therefore came upon us like some sort of natural calamity, like the plague or a flood, inevitable, our destiny.