East West Notes > East West Notes's Quotes

“Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota Territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on the river, he caught up and got the draw on them with his trusty Winchester, at which point they surrendered. Then Roosevelt set off in a borrowed wagon to haul the thieves cross-country to justice. They headed across the snow-covered wastes of the Badlands to the railhead at Dickinson, and Roosevelt walked the whole way, the entire 40 miles. It was an astonishing feat, what might be called a defining moment in Roosevelt’s eventful life. But what makes it especially memorable is that during that time, he managed to read all of Anna Karenina. I often think of that when I hear people say they haven’t time to read.”
― David McCullough

“In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.”
― David Foster Wallace

“A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“On the rare occasions when Romani Gypsies meet south Asians from India or Pakistan, they are astonished to discover that they can understand many of the words these people use in their language, such as Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi. There is thus a connection with eastern Europe - Romania and Hungary - but also with far-away India.”
― Yaron Matras

“So entrenched is our fictional image of Gypsies that we often brush aside real-world experiences as a mirage when they contradict the picture that we have absorbed and internalized.”
― Yaron Matras, I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies

“But on one occasion he was lost for words. 'If it's all as bad as you describe,' asked an inconspicuous young man at the end of one of the lectures, 'then why did you choose to become a Gypsy?' His image of Gypsies had marked them as a mere lifestyle, a fashion, a brand.”
― Yaron Matras, I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies

“Their flag has two background colours: green representing the ground below, and blue for the sky above. In its centre it depicted a wheel: this symbolized the image of the Romani people as travellers and, resembling the 24-spoke wheel known as the Ashoka Chatra which features in the centre of the flag of India, it served as a reference to the Roms' historical country of origin.”
― Yaron Matras, I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies

“What do women who live in houses, wear traditional long skirts, speak Romani to their family members and are offended when somebody calls them 'Gypsies' have in common with women who live in caravans, wear shorts, use only the occasional Romani word and refer to themselves as 'Gypsies?' What does a Romani coppersmith in Bulgaria share with a Romani used-car dealer in Los Angeles? How can a Spanish musician of Gitano background feel represented by a Hungarian Romani member of the European Parliament?”
― Yaron Matras, I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies

“I believe that it is not beneficial either to idealize Romani culture or treat it as exotic. Romani culture is not simply Indian or Asian, though some aspects of it clearly reflect its historical origins in India, language being one of the most obvious. Nor is it inherently a culture of poverty or a culture of resistance or defiance against mainstream norms.”
― Yaron Matras, I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies

“But I do hold the view that we need to rethink and revise our picture of the Romani people and to move away from the literary images and brands, and on to understanding the real everyday lives and aspirations of a real people.”
― Yaron Matras

“The thought of even more permanent separation of children through boarding schools or foster homes is even more troublesome, and Roms in countries such as Norway, Sweden, Hungary and Switzerland are still haunted by the memory of periods in the history of their communities during which the practice of separating Romani children from their families was encouraged by authorities as a means of forcibly integrating the young generations of Roms into mainstream society.”
― Yaron Matras, I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies

“People are often surprised to hear that Romani is in fact a fully fledged language just like any other, that it has its origins in India, that it is related to Sanskrit, an ancient language associated with Indian scholarship and religion, and that it has been preserved by the Romani populations through oral traditions and in a variety of dialects for many centuries.”
― Yaron Matras, I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies

“Romani slaves were in demand because of their skilled crafts and their importance to the economic market. With the growing dependency of landowners, monasteries and the Crown on Romani slaves, the Romanian term Tigan came to be used synonymously with 'slave' and it still has a derogatory connotation in the Romanian language today.”
― Yaron Matras

“I recall my Romani friend who drives from village to village to offer his services to potential clients and who claims, when asked about his origin, to be Irish or Italian. 'I make a living by denying who I am,' he says.”
― Yaron Matras, I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies

“A decree prohibiting the separation of Romani families through the sale of slaves was adopted in Wallachia in 1850. The ownership of private slaves finally became illegal in Moldavia in 1855 and in Wallachia in 1856.”
― Yaron Matras, I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies

“Claims for compensation for physical damage through sterilization and for psychological damage through incarceration were not recognized for this reason. Claims for lost possessions were rejected on the basis of a wholesale prejudice that Gypsies did not own possessions. Claims for compensation for lost income on the basis of a reduction of earning capacity (as a result of physical and psychological damage and years lost due to imprisonment) were rejected on the grounds that Gypsies were unlikely to have sought employment even under more favourable circumstances. Like the German Jews, the Roms had been stripped of their citizenship rights by the Nazi regime's racist legislation.”
― Yaron Matras, I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies

“There was every proof that the persecution and genocide against Romani minorities had been carried out on the basis of racial ideology. Nevertheless, many Roms encountered difficulties reclaiming their German citizenship. As a result they were also considered to be ineligible for compensation payments, which according to the West German compensation law could be made only to German citizens. By the time their citizenship had been reinstated and compensation claims were filed again, claimants were often informed that the deadline for submitting claims had passed.”
― Yaron Matras, I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies

“Many Romani activists are in fact of mixed parentage. They are often individuals who grew up within the mainstream culture, ashamed of, or afraid to acknowledge, their Romani family connections. Others are persons of Romani background who acquired an education and spent the early years of their careers capitalizing on their Romani connections by engaging in academic research on Romani culture or providing expertise to public services and institutions on Romani society. They feel a strong commitment to challenging prejudice and to improving the destiny of their people. But many years of their lives have been spent struggling for recognition and acknowledgement among their non-Romani colleagues and peers.”
― Yaron Matras, I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies

“But while the imaginations of other people will carry them away to form wrong judgements of our conduct, and to decide on it by slight appearances, one's happiness must in some measure be always at the mercy of chance.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“I think Upton Sinclair once wrote that a man has difficulty understanding something if his salary depends on his not understanding.”
― Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

“The problem was that the Duke wanted status not a job, to be recognised rather than to contribute.”
― Andrew Lownie, Traitor King

“She remembered her first-ever boyfriend of over thirty years ago, who told her he preferred smaller breasts than hers, while his hands were on her breasts, as if she’d find this interesting, as if women’s body parts were dishes on a menu and men were the goddamned diners.

This is what she said to that first boyfriend: “Sorry.”

This was her first boyfriend’s benevolent reply: “That’s okay.”
― Liane Moriarty, Nine Perfect Strangers

“A world of meaning is lost when these views of racial ideology, the brutalization of war and the state-run process of extermination dominate our understanding of the Holocaust because the question "Why did the Nazis and other Germans burn the Hebrew Bible?" demands a historical imagination that captures Germans' culture, sensibilities, and historical memories.”
― Alon Confino, A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide

“There was an inner sense to the Nazi persecution and extermination of the Jews, for the progressive removal of the Jews meant the conquering of time - of the present in 1933 through their exclusion from German society; of a moral past in 1938 through the elimination of Judaism and the Bible; and ultimately of history, and therefore of the future, in 1941 through the extermination from the face of the earth of all the Jews as the source of all historical evil.”
― Alon Confino, A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide

“The parade, the participation of children, the public mockery, the photographs - all of these were essential elements of prewar anti-Jewish actions. The public humiliation of Jews in German localities followed a script from 1933 through the deportations in 1941-1943. Germans knew this script and followed it as they deported the Jews.”
― Alon Confino, A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide

“The Nazis thus offered a modern salvation worldview that defined evil lucidly and consistently: significantly, it did this by blending science, morality, and identity, that is, by mixing modern race theories, moral religious sentiments associated with a tradition of Christianity, and key elements of Heimat and German national identity.”
― Alon Confino, A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide