Sevdalinka Quotes

“For all the pain, sorrow, and violence inflicted on this magnificent world by people of different faiths for whatever misguided reason, hope springs eternal. Hope is life.”
― Ayşe Kulin, Rose of Sarajevo

“We’ve lived openly with our different backgrounds for years in this country. There’s never been a problem. Do you think people are going to change overnight just because a madman is taking the reins of government?” “Nobody could have predicted that reasonable Germans would stand by as their Jewish neighbors were rounded up and exterminated. But when that madman came to power, everything changed, and reasonable people did nothing to stop it. They all tried to save their own skin first and foremost.”
― Ayşe Kulin, Rose of Sarajevo

“No country is completely free of those who would prefer to keep people separate. Even in countries with the most homogenous of populations, there will always be some who feel compelled to condemn, envy, and attack others, whether for belonging to a different political party or merely for supporting a rival football club. But”
― Ayşe Kulin, Rose of Sarajevo

“It’s not the fear of death, the hunger, and the deprivation that scares me, it’s what people are capable of doing to each other when they’re at war.”
― Ayşe Kulin, Rose of Sarajevo

“Savaş insana her şeyi öğretir. Bir de barış içinde yaşamayı öğretse keşke...”
― Ayşe Kulin, Sevdalinka

“Savaş insana her şeyi öğretir. Bir de barış içinde yaşamayı öğretse keşke.”
― Ayşe Kulin, Sevdalinka

“Kimse başını kaldırıp, yüreğinin sesini dinleyecek zamanı bulamıyordu.”
― Ayşe Kulin, Sevdalinka

“Acılar bile, özgür ortamlarda çekilmeliydi.”
― Ayşe Kulin, Sevdalinka

“They want to eliminate our ethnic identity so that we’re left with only our religious identity. That way they can claim the homeland we’ve lived in for nine centuries. Once we’re branded ‘Muslims,’ it will be easier to kick us out of Europe.”
― Ayşe Kulin, Rose of Sarajevo

“Protect me from whom?” “Don’t put me in a difficult position, Mirsada.” “Protect me from whom?” she insisted. “If I’m in danger, I need to know.” “I’m just taking precautions. Those damn racists won’t listen to reason. I’m not talking about our close friends or colleagues, of course. But in our new neighborhood, it might be better to introduce yourself as Miza.” “What are you going to do about my surname?” “You can use mine. It’s not like anybody’s going to ask for your ID.” “So I’ll be Miza in the neighborhood and Mirsada at work?” “Just so nobody bothers you, Mirsada.” “And who are they, these people who would bother me?” “Darling, Yugoslavia is changing fast. I have no way of knowing how people will be acting a few weeks or months from now. I’m not asking you to change your name. It’s your safety I’m worried about.” “We’ve lived openly with our different backgrounds for years in this country. There’s never been a problem. Do you think people are going to change overnight just because a madman is taking the reins of government?”
― Ayşe Kulin, Rose of Sarajevo

“ID”
― Ayşe Kulin, Rose of Sarajevo

“There are three different takes on career women in this house, she thought to herself: that of my husband, who respects working women but wishes I wasn’t one of them; that of my mother, who hates the very idea; and then there’s me, a working woman who has no idea what she really wants! There”
― Ayşe Kulin, Rose of Sarajevo

“Now this, this is hell! Nimeta said to herself. I’ve lived to see hell on earth. God must be making us pay for our sins here and now.”
― Ayşe Kulin, Rose of Sarajevo

“In a lifespan of seventy or eighty years, he thought to himself, the first and the last ten years are marked by the helplessness of childhood and old age, but are we sent to this earth to squander the remaining fifty or sixty years by constantly being at each other’s throats, fighting and waging war, and then suffering the losses and destruction that result? Whether Bogomil or Christian, Jew or Muslim, was that really mankind’s fate?”
― Ayşe Kulin, Rose of Sarajevo

“No country is completely free of those who would prefer to keep people separate. Even in countries with the most homogenous of populations, there will always be some who feel compelled to condemn, envy, and attack others, whether for belonging to a different political party or merely for supporting a rival football club.”
― Ayşe Kulin, Rose of Sarajevo

“You’ll always find a reason not to refuse him, a good reason, Nimeta. Because you’re still in love with him,”
― Ayşe Kulin, Rose of Sarajevo