Prisoners

"September came, and with it the war; the radio spoke a strange new language of exhortations and abbreviations."

"If the police didn't show up before then. Always that little word: if. (p178)"

"The only things we didn't discuss were the things that mattered most. Those we circled around, avoided, pushed away. (p135)"

"It suddenly seemed to me that the further away we got from Poland, the more complicated everything became-nothing was getting easier. We were dragging along all the obstacles we had overcome, and they were spawning new ones, and no sooner did we overcome these than they gave birth to even more. I looked at the young, pink-faced woman, and I could hear her musical, childlike laughter, and her voice, saying, "The important thing is to find a boyfriend." Would she give us away? (p66)"

"Ida Fink...was a master at infusing moments and gestures with the looming violence and death of the Holocaust...Fink worked on a small canvas but managed within the confines of few words to remind us how quickly life can forever move into the abyss."

"Ida Fink's haunting stories-brief and unforgettable-lead us gently into the harrowing ordinariness of wartime Jewish Poland. Through the disturbing, painterly quiet of her art we see them live again, all those doomed, preoccupied, idiosyncratic friends, families, and lovers. Traces confirms it: Ida Fink is the Chekhov of the martyred."

"I can think of no other writer on this subject who has domesticated it in quite the way Ida Fink has, conveying the banality of evil through ordinary details the smell of kasha cooking on a stove, mosquitoes buzzing, sunlight playing on water-and then suddenly, quietly, suffusing that banality with the taste of blood."

"She had already begun to resemble her mother, and would surely have relived her mother's life-a fine home in a small town, pretty children, pretty dresses, the annual trip to a health resort-if the sentence of time hadn't made tragic heroes even of those least suited to play the part."

"Ida Fink's work seems to me one of the best answers offered to the question of how the artist can confront the Holocaust. The delicate motions of consciousness are traced, in all their glorious subtlety, while the unspeakable forces of massed brutality come bearing down. Only a writer of the first rank could bring this off, and the world is lucky to have her."

"at the time, even eighteen-year-olds were nostalgic for the past."

"Her subtle and nuanced writing brings memory and imagination to bear on a traumatic past...In all of Fink’s work, the seemingly insignificant detail opens up a profound look at complexities of experience, memory, and motivation. As Fink excavates what she terms “the ruins of memory,” she brings to the forefront the act of memory itself, and the complicated relationship linking memory, imagination, and language. Fragments of the past that resurface in the present, Fink’s writing offers an unflinching and insightful look at wartime experiences and post-war memories. By turns poignant and tender, grim and sardonic, Fink’s lean and unsentimental prose conveys the profound and lasting effects of the Holocaust."

"Some questions should not even be thought. The facts alone suffice."

"Our fate suddenly came to a halt and hung there for a moment, suspended over the abyss it had been racing toward, hung there for a few minutes (five? six?) and then, just as suddenly, turned...This was why I had come here, just for that moment at the crossroads, that sudden turn, that circus trick performed by our fate. (p248-9)"

"Again we thought, let us survive-but now we were talking about the bombs and the rattling guns. (p237)"

""I always wanted to paint. Always, before the war, that is. But I was thirteen then." ("Splinter")"

"There are thoughts that wither under the gaze of others, that are wounded by the breath of others, that the slightest disruption destroys. ("The Other Shore")"

"This time was measured not in months but in a word-we no longer said "in the beautiful month of May," but "after the first 'action,' or the second, or "right before the third.""

"It was near the end. They had already shot my sons and my husband. I remember that people were saying, 'How can she do it? Why should she save herself? For whom?' But you know, the life force has such strong roots, you can't tear it out. Even after those we love most have died. But you are young, what do you know about that? ("The Other Shore")"

"She watched him lying there, defenseless as a child and, like a child, unconscious of the evil that had been unleashed. ("The End")"

"The death of Tsaritsa would have remained one of a million anonymous deaths were it not for the fact that it happened on a beautiful, mild day. (I've only imagined that the day was mild; much of what I'm going to say-but only the details, not the event itself-is the product of my imagination.) It happened in the very early evening, when the trees cast long shadows and the air was saturated with a light blue haze that was growing deeper and darker by the minute, although it was still long before nightfall. Tsaritsa's death happened at just the hour best suited for strolling, the hour that lures people onto the streets after a hard day's work. (first lines of "The Death of Tsaritsa")"

"Sabina was tall and thin, with a startled expression, as if she knew in advance that the world and its inhabitants had nothing good in store for her. (first lines of "Sabina Under the Sacks")"

"She went for so long without talking that silence became a habit."

"...everybody thinks I'm crazy, but I'm not. I know-every crazy person says that, but really, there's nothing wrong with my head. If only God would make me crazy! It's my heart that's sick, not my head, and there's no cure for that. ("Crazy")"

"The girl who had been crying was now sobbing louder; all of us were aware that every passing minute brought the train's thunder nearer, that any moment now we would hear death riding down the tracks. One girl cried "Mama!" and then other voices cried "Mama!" because there was an echo in the woods. ("Jean-Christophe")"

"In the evening, in my spacious attic room, I wrote, "Will I find peace here? Peace. I yearn for peace." Out of habit, I hid the sheet of paper under the mattress, where it stayed, blank, except for that one line of fine handwriting at the top. (p228)"

"June turned into July; the linden trees perfumed the air; the frogs croaked in the river; the dogs bayed at the moon; the nights were bright and sleepless. The white posters demanded tribute. The Jews gathered gold and silver, coffee and tea, and money, money. The Landrat insisted on silver tableware and valuable china. From nearby towns came news of gold and silver, of coffee and tea and money, money. Gold and silver, coffee and tea, were supposed to buy peace and quiet in the town, peace that was not peace, quiet that was not quiet. "People are naive," Szymon shouted, "whoever believes them is naive. This is only the prelude," he shouted, "only the beginning." He did not say what it was the beginning of. He didn't have to."

"Sometimes even I would return from work, open the door, and feel as if I were seeing a stage on which the last act of a play was about to begin at any moment. (p18)"

"I heard the gentle click of Aunt Julia's knitting needles. No one knew what she was knitting, but we all knew why. (p18)"

"It's hard to reconstruct those days, to push through the nebulous expanses of memory. The fog thickens and thins, the picture blurs and clears. All the bits and pieces must be assembled into one continuous whole, and the task is difficult, and, above all, painful. (p33)"

"Liza went to Iraq for similar reasons. She intended to research the way Iraqis, and women in particular, were living after ISIS and in the shadow of sectarianism — not, as some online critics have said, to spy for the Israeli government."

"The [[w:Syrian civil war|[Syrian civil] war]] has transformed the Alawi community in numerous ways. The most profound and obvious one for a community numbering about two million people is the scale of loss of men of military age. The Syrian regime stopped releasing statistics regarding casualties in its ranks early in the war, but Gregory P. Waters, a researcher at Berkeley School of Law's Human Rights Center, estimates that tens of thousands of Alawi men have been killed fighting for the regime. Tens of thousands more have been gravely injured, sustaining disabilities that preclude them from participating in the labor force."

"The recruitment to Azerbaijan and Libya reveal the desperate pragmatism of Syrians who have been reduced to subsistence in a country ruined by war—a war whose end is nowhere in sight, and which will, in any case, be determined by outside powers that helped destroy the country. The two countries that intervened most decisively in Syria to advance their interests, Turkey and Russia, as well as those that stood by as Syria drowned in blood, place virtually no value on Syrian lives, but see them instead as pawns in their own geopolitical chess game. Syrians—former rebels, militia members, and ordinary civilians—are simply leaning into the part they’ve been assigned: as pawns. Refusing to accept this logic means they and their families go hungry."

"Although Alawis are overrepresented in the ruling elite, this does not translate into any alleviation of their generally deprived circumstances. Those with ties to the ruling family, whether through tribal or business dealings, are rich, while most Alawis live in underdeveloped villages. Unlike the Sunni underclass, which largely resided in rebel-held territory, Alawis—who cannot afford to emigrate, enroll in university to defer their service, or bribe their way out of military service (or into noncombat posts)—reside entirely in regime-held territory, where the draft is imposed and enforced through routine raids and at checkpoints."

"Liza believed from early adulthood that caring about the citizens of Israel also meant caring about the rights of Palestinians in Israel. Later, she turned her attention both professionally and personally to our Arab neighbors in their fight for freedom during the Arab Spring. But she didn’t want to merely view them vis-à-vis their relationship with Israel; she believed that the right thing to do was to try to understand our neighbors from inside their own societies, the way they experienced and understood themselves. She became fluent in Arabic, and she visited many countries most Israelis will never enter."

"With complete unfairness, they removed me from football and did not even explain about it."

"Whenever I talk about social and civic issues, football is not at the forefront for me. I have to use the position I am in. Our fans buy tickets and cheer us with thousands of misfortunes, so we have to be their media."

"Mr. Zarif, you say that you are proud to be under pressure because of Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria, know that it is not you who is under pressure, in fact it is ordinary people who are under pressure."

"I do feel guilt for the crime. It was a crime. I wasted a lot of time of the North Koreans' and the Americans', of all of the officials who spent time with my case."

"If I am executed, everyone should know that in the 21st century, with all the costs and mechanisms for human rights such as the UN, the Security Council and etc., an innocent person tried and fought with all his might to make his voice heard. But he was executed."

"We have no tribune, no money and no party. The only power we have is the energy and voice of the freedom-loving people of the world"

"The evidence is there if the court wants to investigate [the acts of torture]."

"There is not one shred of evidence in this damned case that shows I’m guilty. But they don’t want to listen to us. I realised they are looking for a neck for their rope."

"From this moment forward, my family and I need help. I am not only talking about Iranian, my audience are every persons who talking about humanity and has a bit of honor in them: Your silence means supporting oppression and oppressors. It means supporting the execution of an innocent person. It means step by step I am getting closer to the gallows."

"There is a proverb [in Persian] that goes innocently to the gallows, but doesn't go to the top. But it's a lie. We are seeing that everything was a lie."

"I want every free and right-seeking person, regardless of their opinion and profession, to be the voice of me and my family. Because human dignity has no meaning except by supporting the right and justice"

"Globalization, integration and interdependence can and should be important driving forces towards environmentally sound sustainable development. Regrettably, in our contemporary world we see only too often patterns of disintegration and the absence of the rule of law, accompanied by flagrant violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms. These constitute not only an affront to human dignity, but they have the adverse effect of hindering sustainable human development and most often bring about a fatal degradation of the environment as well."

"The lessons and tasks emerging from global conferences and from other areas of United Nations activity have a twofold nature. On the one hand, each of them, having its undisputed merits, appears to lend itself to universal collective action. On the other hand, taken in their totality, they require not only that we set our priorities but also a thorough efficiency probe and maybe a fuller use of the principle of subsidiarity as well."

"The time has come for a revitalized multilateral mentality to meet effectively and firmly the challenge of the new global and interconnected threats of resurgent nationalism and ethnic strife, international terrorism, illicit drug-trafficking, the smuggling of nuclear materials, the deliberate degradation of the global environment and poverty."

"We live in a time of opportunities, and the United Nations is at a crossroads. Only a reformed United Nations can be a catalyst in our endeavours to create a safe and secure world, where freedom, democracy and respect for human rights flourish. We should redouble our efforts to revitalize the United Nations. To this effect, there can be no delay in restructuring and streamlining the costly bureaucracy of the United Nations system. We have to rationalize the work of the General Assembly. Enlargement of the Security Council, along with enhancement of its effectiveness, is more than necessary. Financial reform of the United Nations is a must."

"At this important juncture of history, our task is to develop and strengthen a genuinely worldwide constituency for the United Nations. We can do this only if we make every effort to involve the young generations, whose confidence must be won through a renewed philosophy of multilateral cooperation. I am confident that for generations to come the promotion and protection of multi-ethnicity, diversity, tolerance and respect for human dignity will be the major feature what is expected of the United Nations."