women-from-ukraine

""We have no mathematicians in the family; my mom, dad, grandma, and grandpa are all"

""For me, mathematics and strong emotions are incompatible. When the war started, at first I"

"I try to keep learning something new all the time, even if I don’t feel like it."

"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."

"To get somewhere, you have to start moving."

"Efforts invested in building new connections bring the most significant results because one person alone is not a warrior."

"I always speak to people the way I’d want them to speak to me: without sarcasm and with complete honesty."

"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."

"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."

"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"

"⁃ У понеділок? — лінькувато перепитав Цвичок. - Понеділок, ґаздику, тяжкий день. Хоч у узимі, хоч уліті."

"“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.“"

"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."

"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.."

"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."

"І що б я не робила, куди б не йшла, а думи про малювання завжди, як вірний друг, зі мною."

"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."

"Until the last sentence of writing it is always uncertainty"

"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."

"Democracy is not a gift but a prize that has to be won over and over again, and it is worth fighting for."

"In Ukraine, death has become an integral part of everyday life"

"Ось Господь. Він убитий лежить у труні. Воскресіння злетіло, здається, із графіка. Він був волонтером в останній найгіршій війні."

"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."

"War shortens the distance from person to person, from birth to death."

"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?"

"Що змінилося, сестро? Куля повітряна стала свинцевою. Метафора – мертвою."

"Ні! Я жива! Я буду вічно жити! Я в серці маю те, що не вмирає."

"Жах не в тому, що щось змінеться, - жах у тому, що все може залишитися так само."

"Ні, я хочу крізь сльози сміятись, Серед лиха співати пісні, Без надії таки сподіватись, Жити хочу! Геть, думи сумні!"

"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."

"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"

"He who has not lived in the midst of a storm does not know the value of strength"

"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."

"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."

"...Marjana Savka’s poems ― lyrical, exuberant, but underwritten by a tough-minded skepticism... sum up this middle generation’s difficult and lasting achievement.”"

"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."

"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"

"Steimer remained convinced that constitutional safeguards of freedom were a sham."

"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."

"Mollie Steimer resembled Emma Goldman or Voltairine de Cleyre in the strength of her commitment more than she did Marie Ganz or Margaret Anderson."

"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 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."

"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.""

"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."

"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."