Em

“Democracy or reading, democracy of space: our public library tradition, wherever we live in the wide world, was incredibly hard-won for us by the generations before us and ought to be protected, not just for ourselves but in the name of every generation after us.”
― Ali Smith, Public Library and Other Stories

“that the Ukrainian choice is a choice between nonexistence and an existence that kills you, and that all of our hapless literature is merely a cry of someone pinned down by a beam in a building after an earthquake—I’m here! I’m still alive!—but, unfortunately, the rescue teams are taking their time and on your own—how the hell are you supposed to get out?”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex

“Meals were the daily bane of my existence; not so much the constant work of picking, cleaning, chopping, cooking—though those activities were fairly baneful in themselves—but primarily the never-ending chore of remembering what we had on hand, and balancing the effort required to make it edible against the knowledge of what might spoil if we didn’t eat it right away.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Go Tell the Bees that I Am Gone

“When something frightens them, they do not run but go to face it. They take up arms and go to the front. They are not afraid to live, and to die, too, if they have to: they already know that, too is a part of life.”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories