Gwynfor’s Reviews > Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo > Status Update

pp. 100-1–“November 14, 1992, is a day Sarajevo will remember. It reminded me of the movies I saw about the Jews in the Second World War.”

“That’s nature at work. Children grow, the elderly age. That’s how it is with those of us who are still alive.”

“We try to brighten up this life of ours, a life that’s getting harder and harder by the day. Sometimes I say—this isn’t life, it’s an imitation of life.”

“These people just go on killing. MURDERS! I pity them for being so very, very stupid, so servile, for humiliating themselves so much… .”

“I keep asking why? What for? Who’s to blame? I ask, but there’s no answer. All I know is that we are living in misery. Yes, I know, politics is to blame for it all. I said I wasn’t interested in politics, but in order to find out the answer I have to know something about it.”

“Today in Vaso Miškin Street people signed the book of mourning and laid flowers. They renamed the street and now it’s called the Street of Anti-Fascist Resistance.”

“The forces of war don’t know anything about love and the desire to save something. They just know how to destroy, burn, take things away. … I feel as though no one and nothing here will survive.”

“There’s no joking with war.”

Bless their hearts, they always think their old “normal” will return, just as so many Americans now cannot accept that the US as they’ve always known it has become a chapter of the past.