227 quotes found
"O let the organ, many-voiced, sing boldly, O let it roar like spring's first thunderstorm! My half-closed eyes over your young bride's shoulder Will meet your eyes just once and then no more."
"I go forth to seek — To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak."
"You thought I was that type: That you could forget me, And that I'd plead and weep And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare..."
"Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul Vicarious tears or a single glance. And I swear to you by the garden of the angels, I swear by the miracle-working icon, And by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you."
"I don't know if you're alive or dead. Can you on earth be sought, Or only when the sunsets fade Be mourned serenely in my thought?"
"No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured Me more, not Even the one who betrayed me to torture, Not even the one who caressed me and forgot."
"Why is this century worse than those others? Maybe, because, in sadness and alarm, It only touched the blackest of the ulcers, But couldn't heal it in its span of time."
"All has been looted, betrayed, sold; black death's wing flashed ahead."
"You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire."
"That day in Moscow, it will all come true, when, for the last time, I take my leave, And hasten to the heights that I have longed for, Leaving my shadow still to be with you."
"A multi-colored crowd streaked about, and suddenly all was totally changed. It wasn't the usual city racket. It came from a strange land."
"Natural thunder heralds the wetness of fresh water high clouds to quench the thirst of fields gone dry and parched, a messenger of blessed rain, but this was as dry as hell must be. My distraught perception refused to believe it, because of the insane suddenness with which it sounded, swelled and hit, and how casually it came to murder my child."
"Give me bitter years of sickness, Suffocation, insomnia, fever, Take my child and my lover, And my mysterious gift of song — This I pray at your liturgy After so many tormented days, So that the stormcloud over darkened Russia Might become a cloud of glorious rays."
"Now no one will listen to songs. The prophesied days have begun. Latest poem of mine, the world has lost its wonder, Don't break my heart, don't ring out."
"I am not one of those who left the land to the mercy of its enemies. Their flattery leaves me cold, my songs are not for them to praise."
"But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you … more proud..."
"Sweet to me was not the voice of man, But the wind's voice was understood by me. The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul, But I loved the silver willow best of all."
"Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree. Mute separations, mute black, bloody events in every family. Invisible mourning worn by mothers and wives. Now the arrested are returning, and two Russias stare each other in the eyes: the ones that put them in prison and the ones who were put in prison. A new epoch has begun. You and I will wait for it together."
"The sand as white as old bones, the pine trees strangely red where the sun comes down. I cannot say if it is our love, or the day, that is ending."
"You lived aloof, maintaining to the end your magnificent disdain."
"Now you're gone, and nobody says a word about your troubled and exalted life. Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn at your dumb funeral feast."
"Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I, I, sick with grief for the buried past, I, smoldering on a slow fire, having lost everything and forgotten all, would be fated to commemorate a man so full of strength and will and bright inventions, who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me, hiding the tremor of his mortal pain."
"And the just man trailed God's shining agent, over a black mountain, in his giant track, while a restless voice kept harrying his woman: "It's not too late, you can still look back at the red towers of your native Sodom, the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed, at the empty windows set in the tall house where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed.""
"Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, who suffered death because she chose to turn."
"Thinking of the sun causes quick beating of my heart — snowy weather comes on the wind lightly drifting."
"The silvery tree opens to an empty sky — maybe it is better that I am not your husband."
"Thinking of the sun makes my heart beat faster — too fast! What darkness! From this night winter begins."
"All as before: against the dining-room windows Beats the scattered windswept snow, And I have not changed either, But a man came to me. I asked: "What do you want?" He replied: "To be with you in Hell." I laughed: "Oh, you'll foredoom Us both to disaster.""
"But lifting his dry hand He lightly touched the flowers: "Tell me how men kiss you, Tell me how you kiss men.""
"Not a single muscle quivered On his radiantly evil face. Oh, I know: his delight Is the tense and passionate knowledge That he needs nothing, That I can refuse him nothing."
"As a white stone in the well's cool deepness, There lays in me one wonderful remembrance. I am not able and don't want to miss this: It is my torture and my utter gladness. I think, that he whose look will be directed Into my eyes, at once will see it whole."
"I knew: the gods turned once, in their madness, Men into things, not killing humane senses. You've been turned in to my reminiscences To make eternal the unearthly sadness."
"I hear always the sad voices of summer passing like red winged birds over the high grass"
"I do not need your loving words or hurried kiss as night comes down in the place where we once lived innocent as children, and happier."
"We aged a hundred years, and this happened in a single hour: the short summer had already died, the body of the ploughed plains smoked."
"We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, but when we started losing one after the other so each day became remembrance day, we started composing poems about God's great generosity and — our former riches."
"This cruel age has deflected me, like a river from this course. Strayed from its familiar shores, my changeling life has flowed into a sister channel. How many spectacles I've missed: the curtain rising without me, and falling too. How many friends I never had the chance to meet."
"I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now."
"The grave I go to will not be my own. But if I could step outside myself and contemplate the person that I am, I should know at last what envy is."
"I have lit my treasured candles, one by one, to hallow this night. With you, who do not come, I wait the birth of the year. Dear God! the flame has drowned in crystal, and the wine, like poison, burns Old malice bites the air, old ravings rave again, though the hour has not yet struck."
"Dread. Bottomless dread... I am that shadow on the threshold defending my remnant peace."
"Let the gossip roll! What to me are Hamlet's garters, or the whirlwind of Salome's dance, or the tread of the Man in the Iron Mask? I am more iron than they."
"Prince Charming, prince of the mockers — compared with him the foulest of sinners is grace incarnate..."
"That woman I once was, in a black agate necklace, I do not wish to meet again till the Day of Judgement."
"Are the last days near, perhaps? I have forgotten your lessons, prattlers and false prophets, but you haven't forgotten me. As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future — a terrible festival of dead leaves."
"All the mirrors on the wall show a man not yet appeared who could not enter this white hall. He is no better and no worse, but he is free of Lethe's curse: his warm hand makes a human pledge. Strayed from the future, can it be that he will really come to me, turning left from the bridge?"
"From childhood I have been afraid of mummers. It always seemed an extra shadow without face or name had slipped among them..."
"You... you are as old as the Mamre oak, ancient interrogator of the moon, whose feigned groans cannot take us in. You write laws of iron."
"Creature of special tastes, you do not wait for gout and fame to elevate you to a luxurious jubilee chair, but bear your triumph over the flowering heather, over wildernesses. And you are guilty of nothing: neither of this, that, nor anything.."
"Besides what have poets, in any case, to do with sin? They must dance before the Ark of the Covenant or die! But what am I trying to say?"
"In the black sky no star is seen, somewhere in ambush lurks the Angel of Death, but the spices tongues of the masqueraders are loose and shameless A shout: "Make way for the hero!" Ah yes. Displacing the tall one, he will step forth now without fail and sing to us about holy vengeance..."
"There is no death, each of us knows — it's banal to say. I'll leave it to others to explain."
"Is this the visitor from the wrong side of the mirror? Or the shape that suddenly flitted past my window? Is it the new moon playing tricks, or is someone really standing there again between the stove and the cupboard?"
"This means that gravestones are fragile and granite is softer than wax. Absurd, absurd, absurd! From such absurdity I shall soon turn gray or change into another person. Why do you beckon me with your hand? For one moment of peace I would give the peace of the tomb."
"No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot, survivor of that time, that place. — 1961"
"Such grief might make the mountain stoop, reverse the waters where they flow, but cannot burst these ponderous bolts that block us from the prison cells crowded with mortal woe..."
"In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad. Once, someone "recognized" me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the stupor to which everyone had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there): "Can you describe this?" And I answered: "Yes, I can." Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face."
"For some the wind can fleshly blow, for some the sunlight fade at ease, but we, made partners in our dread, hear but the grating of the keys, and heavy-booted soldiers' tread. As if for early mass, we rose and each day walked the wilderness, trudging through silent street and square, to congregate, less live than dead."
"Where are they now, my nameless friends from those two years I spent in hell? What specters mock them now, amid the fury of Siberian snows, or in the blighted circle of the moon? To them I cry, Hail and Farewell! — March 1940"
"That was a time when only the dead could smile, delivered from their wars, and the sign, the soul, of Leningrad dangled outside its prison-house..."
"The stars of death stood over us. And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed under the crunch of bloodstained boots, under the wheels of Black Marias."
"At dawn they came and took you away. You were my dead: I walked behind. In the dark room children cried, the holy candle gasped for air."
"This woman is sick to her marrow-bone, this woman is utterly alone, with husband dead, with son away in jail. Pray for me. Pray."
"Not, not mine: it's somebody else's wound. I could never have borne it. So take the thing that happened, hide it, stick it in the ground. Whisk the lamps away... Night."
"For seventeen months I have cried aloud calling you back to your lair. I hurled myself at the hangman's foot. You are my son, changed into nightmare. Confusion occupies the world, and I am powerless to tell somebody brute from something human, or on what day the word spells, "Kill!""
"The word dropped like a stone on my still living breast. Confess: I was prepared, am somehow ready for the test."
"Today I have so much to do: I must kill memory once and for all, I must turn my soul to stone, I must learn to live again— Unless ... Summer's ardent rustling Is like a festival outside my window."
"You will come in any case — so why not now? How long I wait and wait. The bad times fall. I have put out the light and opened the door for you, because you are simple and magical. Assume, then, any form that suits your wish, take aim, and blast at me with poisoned shot, or strangle me like an efficient mugger, or else infect me — typhus be my lot —"
"It's all the same to me. The Yenisei swirls, the North Star shines, as it will shine forever; and the blue lustre of my loved one's eyes is clouded over by the final horror. — The House on the Fontanka, 19 August 1939"
"Already madness lifts its wing to cover half my soul."
"Now everything is clear. I admit my defeat. The tongue of my ravings in my ear is the tongue of a stranger."
"No use to fall down on my knees and beg for mercy's sake. Nothing I counted mine, out of my life, is mine to take..."
"A choir of angels glorified the hour, the vault of heaven was dissolved in fire. "Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me...""
"Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed, His dear disciple, stone-faced, stared. His mother stood apart. No other looked into her secret eyes. Nobody dared. — 1940-1943"
"I have learned how faces fall to bone, how under the eyelids terror lurks, how suffering inscribes on cheeks the hard lines of its cuneiform texts, how glossy black or ash-fair locks turn overnight to tarnished silver, how smiles fade on submissive lips, and fear quavers in a dry titter. And I pray not for myself alone.. for all who stood outside the jail, in bitter cold or summer's blaze, with me under that blind red wall."
"I've woven them a garment that's prepared out of poor words, those that I overheard, and will hold fast to every word and glance all of my days, even in new mischance, and if a gag should bind my tortured mouth, through which a hundred million people shout, then let them pray for me, as I do pray for them, this eve of my remembrance day."
"From the works of Primo Levi to the recipes of imagined foods found in the concentration camps of Terezin to the brave poetry of Anna Akhmatova written during the Stalinist era, we are forced to acknowledge the power of poetry to name the unspeakable-to enter and to illuminate the secret corridor of horrors."
"I think the first discovery I made for myself which I didn't necessarily share with my family or my friends, but came upon myself, was Russian literature. I've always felt very much enthralled to writers like Dostoevsky, especially, and Chekhov. In later years, modern Russian poets like Pasternak and Mandelstam and Akhmatova have meant a great deal to me. Poetry more than prose."
"The importance of Akhmatova's works in the Russian poetic tradition can scarcely be exaggerated. These works also hold a place of honor in the history of artistic engagement of moral responsibility."
"Anna Andreevna Akhmatova used poetry to give voice to the struggles and deepest yearnings of the Russian people, for whom she remains the greatest of literary heroines. She has lately come to symbolize for the world even beyond Russia the power of art to survive and transcend the terrors of our century."
"Akhmatova never ceased to be astonished at the resurrection of poetry once trampled underfoot, wiped out, it had seemed, once and for all. "We never realized that poetry has such a long life," she was always saying, and "poetry isn't what we thought it was when we were young"...I never ceased to believe in M.'s and Akhmatova's poetry. In our depersonalized world where everything human was silenced, only the poet preserved his "self" and a voice which can still be heard even now."
"Akhmatova introduced all the enormous complexity and wealth of the nineteenth century novel into the Russian lyric. If not for Tolstoi's Anna Karenina, Turgenev's Nest of Gentlefolk (Dvorianskoe gnezdo), all of Dostoevsky and even some [[Leskov, there would be no Akhmatova. Akhmatova's genesis lies entirely in the realm of Russian prose, not in poetry. She developed her poignant and unique poetic form with a backward glance at psychological prose."
"Akhmatova was neither a woman poet in the narrow militant feminist sense in which the term is understood today, nor just a poet of Russia alone.... Her poetic involvements went beyond the domesticated lyricism of conventional feminine poetry and embraced larger questions of political and social inequity. Though essentially a poet of "the keening muse", as Joseph Brodsky described her, Akhmatova rose above personal sorrows (too numerous to relate here) to create a disciplined yet many-layered work of haunting reverberation. … Akhmatova's is a "poetry of witness" that defends the individual against all forms of coercion. Such poetry does not go into "holes of oblivion" as Hannah Arendt would put it, but nags our guilt of connivance with tyrants like Hitler or Stalin. It invokes religious symbolism to reinforce the language of extremity and to compensate for the fragmentation of social vision caused by the turmoil of the times. … The poetry of witness draws upon what Akhmatova calls "the invisible ink" of others to strengthen its claims to authenticity, not as a substitute for ones tattered memories but as a reminder that others have gone down the same path as oneself."
"One of the great Russian poets and a national heroine, Anna Akhmatova (née Gorenko) is not venerated outside Russia as a major poetic voice of the twentieth century. She seemed born to endure the great tragedy in her life and indeed was one of Stalin's most long-suffering literary victims. Her tremendous will to survive, in her self-appointed role as witness of the Great Terror, testifies to huge inner reserves of moral strength that sustained her through years of extreme poverty and isolation, to ultimately become a latter-day nemesis of the dark days of Stalinism. … Her individualism survived the early days of foment in Soviet literature, when literary experimentation was for a short while tolerated, but her work was soon looked upon as insufficiently socialist in its concerns and was suppressed as "bourgeois" after the publication of her collection Anno Domini MCMXXI in 1922. It was the appearance of this work that prompted the eminent Soviet literary critic Boris Eichenbaum to famously deride Akhmatova as "half nun, half harlot" (an epithet later reprised by Andrey Zhdanov in the campaign against Akhmatova in the 1940s)."
"I remembered a poem about queues by Anna Akhmatova-who unlike many of her peers, had survived the Gulag. Well, sort of: "In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad. Once, someone "recognized" me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the stupor to which everybody had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there): "Can you describe this?" And I answered: "Yes, I can." Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face." Akhmatova, her first husband Nikolay Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, and three other poets were part of Acmeism, a poets' guild. In 1921, Gumilyov was shot by a firing squad for counterrevolutionary activity. Mandelstam was arrested in 1934 for writing an ode to Stalin that showed signs of satire and was not convincing enough in its praise.""
"Anywhere I found wood I took it home and started working with it..to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind."
"The anarchists are not promising anything to anyone. The anarchists only want people to be conscious of their own situation and seize freedom for themselves."
"The workers and peasants must, as quickly as possible, seize everything that was created by them over many centuries and use it for their own interests."
"Cossacks, I must tell you that you are the butchers of the Russian workers. Will you continue to be so in the future, or will you acknowledge your own wickedness and join the ranks of the oppressed? Up to now you have shown no respect for the poor workers. For one of the tsar's rubles or a glass of wine, you have nailed them living to the cross."
"The property of the estate owners (pomeshchiks) doesn't belong to any particular detachment, but to the people as a whole. Let the people take what they want."
"Don't think badly of me.–M. Nikiforova"
"I had heard that she was a beautiful woman... Marusya was sitting at a table and had a cigarette in her teeth. This she-devil really was a beauty: about 30, gypsy-type with black hair and a magnificent bosom which filled out her military tunic."
"The speeches of the Left Bloc representatives seem so pale in comparison with the speeches of the anarchists and, in particular, with the speech of M. Nikiforova."
"She is simply a bandit operating under the flag of Soviet power."
"One more pillar of anarchist has been broken, one more idol of blackness has been crashed down from its pedestal... . Legends formed around this "tsaritsa of anarchism". Several times she was rounded, several times her head was cut off but, like the legendary Hydra, she always grew a new one. She survived and turned up again, ready to spill more blood... . And if now in our uyezd the offspring of the Makhnovshchina, the remnants of this poisonous evil, are still trying to prevent the rebirth of normal society and are straining themselves to rebuild once more the bloody rule of Mkno, this latest blow means we are witnessing the funeral feast at the grave of the Makhnovshchina."
"The most powerful thing young students with neither money nor power can do, is to do activism and use journalists and their cameras. When people learn about the problems and discuss them, things start to change."
"The picture of a naked girl is the most peaceful, but also the most unveiling image you can create, so it is very powerful. [...] We live in a patriarchal system where the is totally controlled and used. Women are ashamed of their bodies, and this is a deep problem. We are slaves of men because we do not control our sexuality."
"Feminists often tried to be men: they cut their hair, did not use makeup, walked like men, hid their breasts, used men's clothing... they became men and we thought that was a dangerous path for feminism. [...] We are not ashamed of our bodies. We are proud that we are women, that we are different from men. This is the greatest thing we have achieved with Femen, we have put the woman in the centre of feminism."
"It was great to come so close to Putin and say 'fuck you' straight to his face, almost two years before other Ukrainians understood what he was doing to the country."
"I am human, sometimes I feel afraid and sometimes I am worried because even though I am not afraid to spend a few years in jail, I understand that my mother and friends will be worried. I always discuss this in my head. [...] I'm more scared to live in this country, in this world, and do nothing: to spend life too afraid of everything, too afraid to speak or go to certain places, to just be in a normal work and don't create anything for the next generation. In my understanding, that is much more scary than to go to jail."
"They can kill you in one second, you understand that you are a very very small person. But in the same time one thinks: you are a small person that can make such a big point that even Russia will send their after you!"
"The people should always control the politicians' decisions, but after the they relaxed and believed the president would change things. Because of wrongful decisions of Poroshenko and Putin, yes both of them, we now have a crisis, and a war that nobody believed could become so big and difficult to handle."
"Going into this system means you cannot be against it. It's good to keep a non-governmental free organisation without money from the government, and without having to play the political games. Just to be free and to have the possibility to discuss and control each decision of the from the streets... It's the best and most powerful place to be."
"Femen is the feminist, the girl with the Ukrainian sign, the flowers in the hair, the naked boobs with painted slogans, and in comfortable boots to run and make action in front of the enemy on the streets."
"I'm very happy about what we did, what we do, and what we will do. That's why I again say to women from all over the world, and especially from Luxembourg: Let's be together, and let's fight together!"
"I really want the whole world, and Americans as well, not to get used to this war. Yes, it is far from you, it lasts long, and you can get tired of it, but please do not get used to it, because if everyone gets used to it, this war will never end. Don't get used to the pain. And when you start thinking that there may be some reason for this war, it means that you are in the zone of Russian propaganda. Be careful, hear the truth."
"What happened just over a week ago was impossible to believe. Our country was peaceful; our cities, towns, and villages were full of life. On February 24th, we all woke up to the announcement of a Russian invasion. Tanks crossed the Ukrainian border, planes entered our airspace, missile launchers surrounded our cities. Despite assurances from Kremlin-backed propaganda outlets, who call this a "special operation" - it is, in fact, the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians."
"Perhaps the most terrifying and devastating of this invasion are the child casualties. Eight-year-old Alice who died on the streets of Okhtyrka while her grandfather tried to protect her. Or Polina from Kyiv, who died in the shelling with her parents. 14-year-old Arseniy was hit in the head by wreckage, and could not be saved because an ambulance could not get to him on time because of intense fires. When Russia says that it is 'not waging war against civilians,' I call out the names of these murdered children first. Our women and children now live in bomb shelters and basements. You have most likely all seen these images from Kyiv and Kharkiv metro stations, where people lie on the floors with their children and pets – trapped beneath. These are just consequences of war for some, for Ukrainians it now a horrific reality. In some cities families cannot get out of the bomb shelters for several days in a row because of the indiscriminate and deliberate bombing and shelling of civilian infrastructure."
"This war is being waged against the civilian population, and not just through shelling. Some people require intensive care and continuous treatment, which they cannot receive now. How easy is it to inject insulin in the basement? Or to get asthma medication under heavy fire? Not to mention the thousands of cancer patients whose essential access to chemotherapy and radiation treatment have now been indefinitely delayed. Local communities on social media are full of despair. Many people, including the elderly, severely ill and those with disabilities, have been debilitatingly cut off, ending up far from their families and without any support. War against these innocent people is a double crime."
"Our roads are flooded with refugees. Look into the eyes of these tired women and children who carry with them the pain and heartache of leaving loved ones and life as they knew it behind. The men bringing them to the borders shedding tears to break apart their families, but bravely returning to fight for our freedom."
"The aggressor, Putin, thought that he would unleash blitzkrieg on Ukraine. But he underestimated our country, our people, and their patriotism. Ukrainians, regardless of political views, native language, beliefs, and nationalities, stand in unparalleled unity. While Kremlin propagandists bragged that Ukrainians would welcome them with flowers as saviors, they have been shunned with Molotov cocktails."
"I thank the citizens of the attacked cities, who have coordinated to help those in need. Those that keep working - in pharmacies, stores, public transportation, and social services – showing that in Ukraine, life wins. I acknowledge those that have provided humanitarian aid to our citizens and thank you for your continued support. And to our neighbors who have generously opened their borders to provide shelter for our women and children, thank you for keeping them safe, when the aggressor has rendered us unable to do so. To all the people around the world who are rallying to support Ukraine. We see you! We’re here watching and appreciate your support. Ukraine wants peace. But Ukraine will defend its borders. Defend its identity. These it will never yield."
"In cities where shelling persists, where people find themselves under debris, unable to get out of basements for days, we need safe corridors for humanitarian aid and evacuation of civilians to safety. We need those in power to close our sky!"
"I appeal to you, dear media: keep showing what is happening here and keep showing the truth. In the information war waged by the Russian Federation, every piece of evidence is crucial. And with this letter, I testify and tell the world: the war in Ukraine is not a war "somewhere out there." This is a war in Europe, close to the EU borders. Ukraine is stopping the force that may aggressively enter your cities tomorrow under the pretext of saving civilians. Last week to me and my people, this would have seemed like an exaggeration, but it is the reality we’re living in today. And we do not know how long it will last. If we don't stop Putin, who threatens to start a nuclear war, there will be no safe place in the world for any of us."
"Every Ukrainian is a target for Russians: Every woman, every child. Those who died the other day from a Russian missile [while] trying to evacuate from Kramatorsk were not members of the presidential family, they were just Ukrainians. So the number one target for the enemy is all of us."
"The main thing for Ukraine today is that the whole other world hears and sees us, and it is important that our war does not become "habitual," so that our victims do not become statistics. That's why I communicate with people through foreign media. Don't get used to our grief!"
"Ukrainians did not believe in war — we believed in civilized dialogue. But when the attack took place, we did not become a "frightened crowd," as the enemy had hoped. No. We became an organized community. At once, the political and other controversies that exist in every society disappeared. Everyone came together to protect their home. I see examples every day, and I never get tired of writing about it."
"I am grateful for the opportunity to be here and to address the Congress of the United States of America. I know this is the first time when the wife of the president of a foreign country has the honor to address you within these walls. This is really important for me and for my country. And today, I want to address you as politicians and party representatives as well as mothers and fathers — grandmothers and grandfathers, daughters and sons. I want to address you not as First Lady, but as a daughter and as a mother. No matter what positions and titles we reach in our lives, first of all, we always remain a part of our family. We always remain children to our parents. And no matter how old we are, they love us as their children. And we are always parents to our children. And no matter what happens to them, they will always remain our children. This is the great truth of our life. Our family represents the whole world for us. And we’d do everything to preserve it. And we are happy when we succeed in it, and we cry when we cannot save it. And we remain completely broken when our world is destroyed by a war. Tens of thousands of such worlds have been destroyed in Ukraine."
"This is Lisa. I met this girl before Christmas when we were preparing readings of Merry Christmas for children. I remember her just like she is here. A cheerful, playful, little rascal. The other video was made by Lisa’s mother, whose name is Irina, when she took her child to school, and she asked her, “Where are we going, sweetie?” The daughter calls the names of her favorite teacher. Lisa was only four years old. She’s no longer with us. Here is the stroller of Lisa. On July 14th, Lisa was killed by a Russian missile attack on our city of Vinica in the center of Ukraine. Twenty-five people killed, almost 200 injured. Lisa’s mother is in serious condition. And for several days, nobody dared to tell her that Lisa has died. This is where the words, where are we going, have been ringing in my ear for six days, ever since it happened."
"Usually the wives of presidents are exclusively engaged in peaceful affairs: education, human rights, equality, accessibility. And maybe you expected from me to speak on those topics. But how can I talk about them when an unprovoked, invasive terrorist war is being waged against my country. Russia is destroying our people."
"Since the beginning of the war, Russia has launched over 3,000 different cruise missiles on Ukraine, but to destroy somebody’s family, you don’t need a missile. Maybe shrapnel will do it."
"How many families like this may still be destroyed by the war? Those are Russia’s Hunger Games. Hunting for peaceful people in peaceful cities of Ukraine. They will never broadcast this on their news. That’s why I’m showing it to you here."
"Dear ladies and gentleman, the American people and the American families, the Congress and President Biden have already done a lot to help us to stand up to the enemy and protect millions of Ukrainians. We are grateful, really grateful that the United States stands with us in this fight for our shared values of human life and independence. You help us. And your help is very strong. While Russia kills, America saves. And you should know about it. We thank you for that. But, unfortunately, the war is not over. The terror continues. And I appeal to all of you on behalf of those who were killed, on behalf of those people who lost their arms and legs, on behalf of those who are still alive and well, and those who wait for their families to come back from the front. I’m asking for something, now I would never want to ask. I’m asking for weapons, weapons that would not be used to wage a war on somebody’s else’s land, but to protect one’s home in the right to wake up alive in that home, I’m asking for air defense systems in order for rockets not to kill children in their strollers, in order for rockets, not to destroy children’s rooms and kill entire families."
"We want no more airstrikes. No more missile strikes. Is this too much to ask for?"
"The shops. Well, there is just one row of machines that the daylight ever gets to-that is the front row, nearest the window. The girls at all the other rows of machines back in the shops have to work by gaslight, by day as well as by night. Oh, yes, the shops keep the work going at night, too."
"The bosses in the shops are hardly what you would call educated men. And the girls to them are part of the machines they are running."
"At the beginning of every slow season, $2 is deducted from our salaries. We have never been able to find out what this is for."
"How are women treated as they begin to grow? Girls as well as boys go into the factory as soon as they are old enough."
"Let us consider these young girls going into the factories. In the beginning they are full of hope and courage. Almost all of them think that some day they will be able to get out of the factory and work up, but continuing work under long hours and miserable conditions they lose their courage, they lose their hopes. Their only way to leave the factory is marriage. How do you like such a marriage? A girl is ready to give herself to any man who will make the offer! But I am sorry to say that there are thousands of our working girls who are soon disappointed, because right after they are married they have to go back into the factory because their husbands are not making enough money to keep a home."
"Just go through any of the public buildings at midnight and you will see old and middle-aged women on their knees scrubbing away the dirt that men of business have brought in during the day. That gives you a picture of how well men carry the burdens of women."
"You men as a body who make the laws, and men of money who support the makers of the law are responsible for this system of ours that forces 30,000 girls out into the streets."
"When these girls are brought to Court, to a court of men, do you know how they are punished? They are fined and punished for the things that men have done."
"Senators, we are here to stay, 800,000 women in New York State alone. We have learned a good many things. We have learned to organize in the industrial field. Give us a chance, the workingwomen together with the working men, through an intelligent vote and we will make good in the political field."
"In the first two decades of the 20th century, the suffrage movement was infused with immigrant working-class women, in which Jewish women were very prominent. Their numbers–pouring into parades and suffrage organizations–were in the tens of thousands. The two most prominent Jewish immigrant suffrage leaders were Rose Schneiderman and Clara Lemlich. Both were heroines of the Triangle Shirt Waist strike [Uprising of the 20,000] and fire. Lemlich became a communist, Schneiderman a Roosevelt Democrat. They both linked suffrage to the legislative and economic concerns of wage-earning women."
"A Ukrainian immigrant and lifelong radical, Lemlich had moved to New York City in 1903 and led her coworkers at various factories out on strikes between 1906 and 1909. She, like Rose Schneiderman and many others of her time, was one of the early U.S. labor movement's revolutionary "fiery Jewish girls" who would soon leave a mark in their new homeland's history books."
"According to traditional Marxist theory housewives were problematical as to their class consciousness; they often were unreliable allies of radical men. They were usually grouped with peasants and intellectuals as a potentially conservative drag line on the forward march of proletarian men. Women's equality was a stated goal of all Marxist movements, but the way women's issues were treated, one got the clear message that what women did was marginal to the struggle, unless they excelled at doing it the way men did. The great and celebrated heroines-La Pasionaria, Mother Bloor, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Clara Lemlich did not organize housewives; they organized female factory workers, women's auxiliaries or men."
"The labor activist Clara Lemlich described marriage as a young woman's only hope of getting free of the factory. "In the beginning," she wrote, "they are full of hope and courage. Almost all of them think that some day they will be able to get out of the factory and work up, but continuing work under long hours and miserable conditions they lose their hopes. Their only way to leave the factory is marriage.""
"We live in a very interconnected world. … We can’t build fences and close our eyes to real problems of human rights in our world."
"I don’t know what is in store for me or my family or my colleagues or my friends. But I know for sure that Ukraine will resist because we are fighting for our country, for our dignity, for our people, for our values. Russia tried to return us to the past which does not exist at all. We will never be a part of a restored Soviet Union. Putin will lose sooner or later."
"Women are currently represented in all areas of the country’s defence. Women serve in the Ukrainian army. Women have joined territorial defence units. Women take important political decisions. Women provide medical care. Women document Russian war crimes. You can see a significant number of women in every field of the social resistance to this invasion. At least in times of war, we suddenly seem to have gender equality in Ukraine. Women are currently at the forefront of the battle, equal to men."
"I see from the general mood in the country that Ukrainians share the dream to rebuild our country and our destroyed cities together. They are committed to the successful democratic transformation of our country after the war. This dream encourages all of us to continue our struggle."
"Everything the UN stands for is at stake in Ukraine. If Putin is allowed to succeed, a new world will be born, in which larger states will once again be able to invade their neighbors with impunity. A brief period in human history, when the settled sovereign will of the people served as the basis for government, will end. Neo-imperial revisionist powers will create “spheres of influence” using economic pressure, political capture, disinformation, and military coercion to turn smaller neighbors into vassals. A world that is more open, connected, and safer will give way to one that is more closed, fragmented, and violent."
"We live in very dramatic times, and political leaders of the world have to take historical responsibility because for decades, I’ve seen that political leaders behave like they believe the problems we face will vanish. But the truth is that these problems will not vanish. They have to take responsibility and to solve these problems for the next generation and not think only about the electoral period or the future of their own parties."
"We live in a very interconnected workld and only spreading freedom can make our world safer. And if political leaders will not take this historical responsibility, people can take this historical responsibility. All of my experience as a human rights defender has showed me that ordinary people have much greater impact than they can even imagine. And massive mobilization of ordinary people around the world can change the world’s history much more quickly than any UN intervention."
"The UN and its member-states should conduct international peace and security reform to create guarantees for all countries and their citizens, regardless of their participation or non-participation in military blocs or military capacity. Russia should be excluded from the UN Security Council for systematic violations of the UN charter."
"I hope that we will be able to overcome the rage, because sooner or later the war will finish, and we will have to continue building a civilized world. Maybe, in such a crisis, you go beyond some borders like nationality or region, because we are humans. We see ourselves now like people who are fighting for freedom, for human values. For us it doesn’t matter if you are Ukrainians or not. We closely cooperate with Russian human-rights defenders, with Belarusian human-rights defenders. We understand their willingness to help is because we are all human."
"The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to all people in Ukraine who are currently fighting for freedom in all its senses. For the freedom to be a free and independent state. For the freedom to develop the Ukrainian language and culture. For the freedom to have one’s own democratic choice and to build a country in which the rights of every person are protected, the government is accountable, the courts are independent, and the police do not beat peaceful student demonstrations."
"We call on the international community to become their voice and join us in seeking their release. As well as the release of all political prisoners who fought against the authoritarian regimes in Russia and Belarus."
"This story is about resistance to common evil, about the fact that freedom has no borders, and the values of human rights are universal. That human rights defenders build invisible horizontal connections in their societies to assert freedom and protect people in our part of the world, in which a monster is once again trying to rule. And who will lose sooner or later. And then peace will come. In no way should this award sound like an old narrative about fraternal nations. This story is about something else. This story is about the motto that I heard from my teacher, dissident and philosopher Yevhen Sverstyuk – “For our freedom and yours”"
"This award [Nobel Peace Prize] have two dimensions. The first dimension is connecting with award to not only to Ukrainian human rights organisation, Center for Civil Liberties, but to the whole Ukrainian people who are fighting for freedom in all senses. And second dimension is award for human rights defenders who, regardless of their authoritarian regimes, tries to build horizontal ties between each other in order to protect freedom and human rights in our part of the world where Russia try to occupy new territories."
"All my twenty years experience of defense, freedom and human rights shows me that common people have a much greater impact than they can even imagine. And massive mobilisation of the common people can change the world history quicker than UN intervention."
"There are people who will fight for you, who will fight for your rights, who will never leave you alone. And this understanding provides a coverage to continue the fight. And let my lessons learn from this story is that in many part of the world, human rights defenders, they’re not working in human rights field. They’re fighting for human rights. And sometimes because of the size of challenges this fight, it seems that they have no sense. But we have to continue our fight honestly, and result will unexpectedly be achieved."
"Like sometimes I feel myself that we are documenting pain, which burned us out, but parallel, I see and feel the huge wave of solidarity among the people in Ukraine and abroad. And ordinary people start to do unordinary things. And this energy can change a lot."
"First of all, I know Ukraine’s history. We have been fighting for freedom for hundreds of years, and we will never give up. Second, I know the Ukrainian people. Putin underestimated us, and so did the West."
"My first language was Russian. I switched to the Ukrainian language in school when I started to learn Ukrainian history and Ukrainian literature. I suddenly understood that my parents spoke Russian not because it was their choice but because they had been forced into it."
"So, in this war, we are fighting for freedom in all senses: the freedom to be an independent state, not a colony of Russia; the freedom to be Ukrainians, to have our own language and culture, as other nations of the world do; the freedom to have a democratic choice — a chance to build a country where the judiciary is independent, human rights are protected, the government is accountable, and the police serve the people."
"The problem of the Russian nation is that Russians have this imperialistic code, as a driver of their existence. I wish Russians could overcome this side of their nature. It’s a necessity, if Russians are to be happy and successful."
"Justice is costly, but it is also priceless."
"We can’t end the war on our own, but nothing will change without the efforts of each individual. We will pay a high price to finally break away from the Russian civilizational space with its culture, where there is no gender equality, with its dominant violence. We need to prepare for a long marathon that we will win."
"It’s very dangerous to live in the world where your security depends not on the rule of law but on whether your country is a part of a military bloc. That’s a dangerous line of development for humankind."
""Time to take responsibility: Speech by Oleksandra Matviychuk at Nobel Peace Prize awarding ceremony", UkrInform, 10 December 2022"
"Talking of the so-called Russian mass media, it has been obvious to me over these years that it is part of Russia’s military and industrial complex. They work exclusively for military purposes, they incite hatred, they program people to kill, they create an image of the enemy."
"Anarchism is a new social order where no group shall be governed by another group of people. Individual freedom shall prevail in the full sense of the word. Private ownership shall be abolished. Every person shall have an equal opportunity to develop himself well, both mentally and physically. We shall not have to struggle for our daily existence as we do now. No one shall live on the product of others. Every person shall produce as much as he can, and enjoy as much as he needs – receive according to his need. Instead of striving to get money, we shall strive towards education, towards knowledge. While at present the people of the world are divided into various groups, calling themselves nations, while one nation defies another – in most cases considers the others as competitive – we, the workers of the world, shall stretch out our hands towards each other with brotherly love. To the fulfilment of this idea I shall devote all my energy, and, if necessary, render my life for it."
"Among other things it has been stated in the American press that I was very happy to leave Russia, and that I preferred exile in Germany to freedom in Russia. This statement attributed to me, is a deliberate lie! It is true that the hypocrisy, intolerance, and the treachery of the Bolsheviks arouse in me a, feeling of indignation and revolt, but, as an Anarchist, I have no admiration nor defence for any government of any land, and the statement that I prefer exile in Germany rather than freedom in Russia is ridiculous and false. I made it very clear to the press correspondent with whom I spoke that in spite of all the difficulties with which I had to put up with in Russia, I was deeply grieved when I was forced to leave that country. This was not true when I left America. Although I have my entire family, good comrades and many dear friends in the U.S.A. Yet, when I was deported from there by the capitalist government, my heart was light. It was not so in the case of Russia. Never have I felt so depressed as since I have been sentenced to exile from Russia. My love for Russia and its people is too deep for me to rejoice that I am an exile, especially at a time when they are undergoing extreme suffering and most severe persecution. On the contrary, I would prefer to be there, and together with the workers and peasants, search for a way to loosen the chains of Bolshevik tyranny...No, I am NOT happy to be out of Russia. I would rather be there helping the workers combat the tyrannical deeds of the hypocritical Communists"
"Russia of today is a great prison where every individual who is known not to be in full agreement with the Communists is spied upon and booked by the “GPU” (Tcheka) as an enemy of the government. No one can receive books, newspapers, or even a plain letter from his relatives without control of the censor. This institution which keeps the people in absolute ignorance of all news detrimental to the interests of the Bolshevists is now better organized and more strict than was the famous Black Cabinet under Czar Nicholas II. The prisons and concentration camps of Moscow, Petrograd, Kharkov, Odessa, Tashkent, Vologda, Archangel, Solovki, and Siberia are filled with revolutionaries who do not agree with the tyrannical regime enforced by the Bolsheviks. The inhuman treatment that those people receive at the hands of their jailers can have only one purpose: that is, to wear them out physically and mentally so that their lives may become a mere burden to them."
"I left her with a heavy heart. While the Communists are issuing long protests against the persecution of political prisoners (they mean only Communists) in “capitalist” countries, they themselves are imposing savage sentences upon their opponents and are forcing many of our best comrades to die slowly in the jails and concentration camps, and hundreds of others to suffer the bitter pangs of hunger and the unbearable cold of northern Russia and Siberia. The real revolutionaries of Russia today are exiled and cut off from the entire world, forbidden the right of communication with any loving person except the damnable spies who are forever shadowing their footsteps.s"
"All our members sincerely believed that the Revolution was around the corner. Events were taking place very rapidly. In Russia a Revolution had broken out which filled us with great enthusiasm. It was then that our discussions began. Should we give up our stand against war and take the side of the allies, or side with the German militarists? Bernard Sernaker wrote an article for Our paper supporting Peter Kropotkin and the famous sixteen in favor of the allied side against the German Government, to safeguard the libertarian traditions of the French revolutionary movement. After exhaustive discussions we did not accept Sernaker’s article for our paper. We decided to continue our call to the world against war and to stop the bloodbath. But we were not able to continue our agitation much longer because of the Espionage and Sedition Act of October, 1917. We could no longer work openly and freely. All criticism of the government was prohibited. The printshops refused to print our leaflets and our paper. We were compelled to operate underground, illegally."
"In July, 1918, we learned that President Wilson had sent ten thousand American troops to Vladivostock to intervene militarily against the Russian Revolution. At that time we were all very much in sympathy with the Russian Revolution. We sent out a call for a mass protest meeting against intervention and sent it to the American press. Samuel Lipman attended the mass meeting even though he considered himself a Marxian Socialist and we were glad to have him."
"The well-known liberal periodical, The Nation, printed an editorial challenging the legality of the proceedings and raising embarrassing questions for the government to answer. The policy of military intervention in the Russian Revolution was abandoned. We won, in spite of the fact that Abrams, Lachowsky and Sam Lipman were sentenced to twenty years imprisonment, and I to fifteen years."
"In October, 1919, I was illegally sentenced to six months imprisonment in Blackwell Island Prison where I was placed in solitary confinement, entirely separated from the outside world, wt without mail, without visitors. Even my mother was not allowed to visit with me. One day, in January, 1920, a slip of paper was smuggled into my cell informing me that Abrams, Lachowsky; and Lipman were caught while trying to flee to Mexico. That same day a newspaper clipping giving the history of our group a was thrown into my cell."
"We were informed that the exchange with Russian prisoners of war would take effect on the 23rd of November, 1921. We were all deported to Russia."
"Alexander Berkman, “Sasha” to his friends, was a rebel from early childhood. He protested against injustice wherever he saw it...After Berkman was released from prison he continued to devote his life to the revolutionary cause, a convinced anarchist. He worked with all his energies and dedication for the movement, for freedom, and wound up a political refugee in the various countries where he was permitted to live. He was one of the finest, most generous people I ever knew. Although he had very few material possessions, he was always ready to give everything away to others and had to be reminded not to deny himself his urgent personal needs. Berkman made every possible effort to understand and help people...He radiated warmth and comfort, like the rays of the sun."
"I first met Berkman in New York City in the late Fall, 1919, at the home of Stella Ballantine, Emma Goldman’s niece. We discussed the Russian Revolution and the need to expose the atrocities of the Bolsheviks against the anarchists, socialists and all who dared to criticize their new dictatorial regime in Moscow...Sasha argued that the Bolsheviks should be given a chance, that it was too early to start an organized opposition because the revolution was surrounded by enemies...Our second meeting with Sasha and Emma took place in Berlin four years later, November, 1923, where they had been living for two years, since January, 1922. They had left Soviet Russia greatly disillusioned with the Bolshevik regime. Sasha and Emma were each writing about their experiences in Russia. In addition, Sasha was active organizing help for the anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists and other political Opponents held in prison by the Bolsheviks. He appealed for funds, issued a bulletin in English, translated the letters from men and women prisoners in Russia. He assembled and translated all the material that was published in the book, Letters From Russian Prisons."
"Life was difficult for everyone in Germany after World War I and particularly so for the political refugees. Many of us felt that we had to leave Germany. A number of us went to France, including Sasha and Emma."
"His name will live as long as there are and will continue to be rebels who struggle for genuine, true liberty."
"Alas," wrote Mollie in November 1927, "the entire spirit of the 'platform' is penetrated with the idea that the masses MUST BE POLITICALLY LED during the revolution. There is where the evil starts, all the rest ... is mainly based on this line. It stands for an Anarchist Communist Workers' Party, for an army ... for a system of defense of the revolution which will inevitably lead to the creation of a spying system, investigators, prisons and judges, consequently a TCHEKA."
"During these years of exile in the - 1920s and 1930s, Senya and Mollie received a steady stream of visitors-Harry Kelly, Rose Pesotta, Rudolf and Milly Rocker, among others-some of whom recorded their impressions of their old friends. Kelly, for example, found Mollie "as childlike in appearance as ever, and as idealistic too." Goldman, however, thought her "narrow and fanatical," while Senya was always "ill and broken." Emma again compared Mollie to Alexander Berkman as a young militant and "a fanatic to the highest degree. Mollie is a repetition in skirts. She is terribly sectarian, set in her notions, and has an iron will. No ten horses could drag her from anything she is for or against. But with it all she is one of the most genuinely devoted souls living with the fire of our ideal.""
"To the end, her revolutionary passion had burned with an undiminished flame."
"Mollie Steimer and Emma Goldman were deported to Russia. Many of these women, if not all, are now dead. But in a great crisis they stood staunch and true in defense of peace and democracy."
"There is a sharp contrast between Marie Ganz's brief and flamboyant career in the anarchist movement and the sustained dedication of Mollie Steimer (1897-1980). Steimer emigrated with her family from the Ukraine in 1912. One of six children, she described her life in a New York ghetto as typical of "most poor Jewish immigrants." Her father was a laborer, her mother took in boarders, and she worked in various factories. Her formal schooling having been limited by her poverty, Steimer, like Ganz and numerous others, received her education in the radical youth groups where literature and philosophy received almost as much attention as ideas for the creation of the new world. Inspired by Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread, she joined the anarchist group Freedom in 1917. She could not have chosen a more unpropitious time to become an anarchist. The United States, having recently entered World War I, was increasingly intolerant of radicals."
"Mollie Steimer was sentenced to fifteen years for proclaiming: "The tyrants of the world fight each other until they see a common enemy-WORKING CLASS ENLIGHTENMENT. As soon as they find a common enemy they combine to crush it.""
"It is difficult not to be overwhelmed by Mollie Steimer's fidelity to principle throughout decades of persecution. Whether such constancy is a virtue or a flaw may be argued; nevertheless, despite an almost identical sociocultural background to Marie Ganz, Steimer was inspired by intellectual, social, and psychological forces that profoundly distinguished her from the more changeable Ganz. Steimer's conversion to anarchism derived less from an emotional response to a crisis situation than from her acceptance of the basic tenets of anarchist ideology. As a disciple of Kropotkin, Steimer possessed an intellectual and moral vision of the future."
"Steimer remained convinced that constitutional safeguards of freedom were a sham."
"Mollie Steimer resembled Emma Goldman or Voltairine de Cleyre in the strength of her commitment more than she did Marie Ganz or Margaret Anderson."
"Mollie Steimer, who was harassed, imprisoned, and finally deported for her support of the Bolshevik Revolution, believed at the time that only through revolution could capitalism be overthrown. She later supported the equally direct, but less overtly violent, concept of the general strike as the most effective revolutionary tool."
"That’s what cell phones are for—to mask our rapidly progressing helplessness vis-à-vis the real world when we find ourselves face to face with it."
"It takes a lifetime to understand that long ago the grown-ups lied to you, that in fact nothing living, neither a flower, nor a rabbit, nor a person, nor a country, can, in fact, be had: they can only be destroyed, which is the one way to confirm they have been possessed."
"Ukrainians are fighting to free Europe from the spectre of totalitarianism"
"We have behind us a whole century of mass madness. What have we learned from it if we do not recognize history repeating itself in a new guise?"
"If authors weren’t translated, it doesn’t mean they didn’t exist”"
"Нації вмирають не від інфаркту. Спочатку їм відбирає мову."
"Жах не в тому, що щось змінеться, - жах у тому, що все може залишитися так само."
"Людям не те що позакладало вуха – людям позакладало душі."
"А ви думали, що Україна так просто. Україна – це супер. Україна – це ексклюзив. По ній пройшли всі катки історії. На ній відпрацьовані всі види випробувань. Вона загартована найвищим гартом. В умовах сучасного світу їй немає ціни."
"Ні! Я жива! Я буду вічно жити! Я в серці маю те, що не вмирає."
"Ні, я хочу крізь сльози сміятись, Серед лиха співати пісні, Без надії таки сподіватись, Жити хочу! Геть, думи сумні!"
"He who has not lived in the midst of a storm does not know the value of strength"
"Lesya Ukrainka set Ukrainian culture free from the image of provinciality imposed on it by discourse of the Russian Empire around the turn of the 20th century."
"War shortens the distance from person to person, from birth to death."
"The death of these people will leave a gaping wound in our souls, in our culture, science, economy, industry and society. This is not a metaphor; I don’t know of any poetry that can heal this wound"
"We stopped digging deep long ago in this uncertain field of ours-yours because all kinds of junk can turn up: human bones, horses’ heads, unexploded mines"
"Halyna Kruk has found a language to ingest violence and horror — blunt and eloquent, witty and aphoristic, her language is layered and electric as it takes on the daily dislocations of Russia’s barbaric war on Ukraine. Idiosyncratic and universal, these poems bring us necessary news as only poetry can."
"Everyone who receives power involuntarily feels omnipotent…superior to all others who fantasize about freedom. But what do we know about the dependencies of those who are themselves omnipotent?"
"Until the last sentence of writing it is always uncertainty"
"In Ukraine, death has become an integral part of everyday life"
"What and how do we remember and what do we forget? What do we want to remember and forget? How does history become a legend and legend a myth? Sofia Andrukhovych reveals to the reader an interlace of stories about human destinies, which form a mosaic of collective Ukrainian memory. A very timely book for modern Ukraine. After all, the future belongs to those who are not afraid to look back and look in the mirror."
"I talk about the things that grandparents ran away from, the things that wouldn't have let them survive and become actual grandparents had they decided not to suffer, leave everything they loved behind—and flee."
"Democracy is not a gift but a prize that has to be won over and over again, and it is worth fighting for."
"Ось Господь. Він убитий лежить у труні. Воскресіння злетіло, здається, із графіка. Він був волонтером в останній найгіршій війні."
"Що змінилося, сестро? Куля повітряна стала свинцевою. Метафора – мертвою."
"...Marjana Savka’s poems ― lyrical, exuberant, but underwritten by a tough-minded skepticism... sum up this middle generation’s difficult and lasting achievement.”"
"Сінокосна трава у корінні іще жива, але стеблами мертва не-боли-голова. Тратить кров зеленаву, не знає мовчати ні мовити. Позбуваючись мови, прибувають на силі слова.."
"І що б я не робила, куди б не йшла, а думи про малювання завжди, як вірний друг, зі мною."
"Доля випробовує тих, хто намірився іти до великої мети, але сильних духом не спіймає ніхто, вони зі стиснутими руками вперто і сміливо ідуть до наміченої мети. І тоді доля винагороджує їх сторицеєю і відкриває перед ними всі таємниці дійсно прекрасного і незрівнянного мистецтва."
"⁃ У понеділок? — лінькувато перепитав Цвичок. - Понеділок, ґаздику, тяжкий день. Хоч у узимі, хоч уліті."
"На відміну від Петра І, який «прорубав» Російській імперії «вікно» в Європу, Україні цього не потрібно було робити, бо вона вже була Європою. Проте в якийсь момент цей зв'язок був забутий."
"It's my try to give strong voice to my homeland, to Crimea. The centuries of the Russian Empire, then Soviet Union, now Russia - they did a lot of propaganda to shut us up. Then they told the whole world we did not exist."
"“Я стала пояснювати йому різниці між нами та руськими, нарисувала мапу України та її сусідніх країн, щоб він краще зрозумів її положення, врешті, сказала я, що нас є біля сорока мільйонів та що Україна у півтора раза більша за Францію. Ці всі пояснення я знаю краще за молитву, бо частенько трапляється мені повторювати їх французам та іншим чужинцям, що нічого не знають про наше існування.“"
"In my travels, from land to land, I never encountered the paradise I had hoped for. But sometimes, at least, I captured a few glimpses of earthly happiness from afar, and now this has a greater value for me than any imaginary paradise"
"Роблю сонячні квіти, бо люблю людей, роблю на щастя людям, щоб квіти мої були, як саме життя народу, щоб усі народи один одного любили, щоб люди жили, як квіти б цвіли б на всій землі."
"Efforts invested in building new connections bring the most significant results because one person alone is not a warrior."
"To get somewhere, you have to start moving."
"I try to keep learning something new all the time, even if I don’t feel like it."
"I always speak to people the way I’d want them to speak to me: without sarcasm and with complete honesty."
"For me, success is looking back at what’s been done and knowing it was what needed to be done, with no regrets about lost time or effort."
""For me, mathematics and strong emotions are incompatible. When the war started, at first I"
""We have no mathematicians in the family; my mom, dad, grandma, and grandpa are all"