Status Updates From Dressed for a Dance in the ...

“Before my death, I want to do more good things. When I die, I don’t want to stand before God with empty hands, you see? I want to give other people what politics and history deprived me of in my childhood.”

“We prefer to be punished than to keep quiet.”

“My soul is rebelling. They can torture me, they can destroy my body, but not my soul. My soul is alive, and it’s rebelling. Stalin is a vampire who damages, destroys, devastates us. Hitler tried to exterminate the Jews, the Communists, the Romani, but Stalin wants to annihilate the intelligentsia, the spirit of the nation.”

“Take pity on the evildoers, they are bad because they are weak. Find friends like yourself, and those friendships will last you through life. It’s what always happens in the middle of unhappiness.”

“Even as I took it in, I sensed that the tundra wasn’t green and friendly, but instead gray and heartless, and that its embrace wasn’t like a mother’s, but a step mother’s.”

“What are your enemies looking for? To see you frustrated, bitter, downcast. If you don’t want to give your enemies that pleasure, then keep your head high.’

“ People looked away. Death and disaster are always naked, and people are too ashamed to look at them.“

“ I could not forget, even for a minute, what they didn’t want to see: that under the calm surface, a vicious regime lay in wait, a brutal political machine that watched constantly and that, like an evil dragon, devoured its victims every day.“

“ it doesn’t affect them, why put out a fire if you’re not getting burned?“