Em

“Understanding, in fact, is my job, that's what writers are for--to try to understand everyone and everything and put this understanding into words, finished to the gossamer fineness of a rose petal, words made supple and obedient, words cut to hold the reader's mind like a well-made glove that fits like second skin.”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories

“On principle, I don't want to teach English. It's a slippery slope. You agree to teach English and then suddenly you're forty-five, with a fanny pack and Teva sandals, still teaching English, except inexplicably you have become a white male and you have a hot Chinese girlfriend and everyone else thinks you're a creep.”
― Jessica Pan, Graduates in Wonderland: The International Misadventures of Two (Almost) Adults

“It occurred to me then that if one went looking for a single image of this revolution, for our own Liberty Leading the People, the young beauty with the orange carnation facing the shields of the riot police would not do no matter how awesome she looked on posters—it would have to be that hunched-over, inconceivably old, indestructible, and uncowed old lady from the Maidan, with her three cupfuls of hot tea—Here, children, warm yourselves, God bless you. Now, that would be the real truth about us, but who’d ever want that old flesh to be their revolution’s allegory?”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories

“[In Georgia] A cheerful anarchy reigned.”
― Colin Thubron, Among the Russians: Vivid and Poetic Travel Writing on a 10,000-Mile Journey Through Late Soviet Culture and History