Quotes from Elena Lappin

It is difficult to inherit the histories of those who raise us when they choose to hide them.

A lifetime is not so many years for a person to play with.

The world, I remember feeling rather than thinking, is the same everywhere: families sleeping and eating under one roof, speaking in different languages but about more or less the same things.

Love strengthens the fabric of memory.

History is the hidden map of who, where and how we are today.

Our very special love-friendship continued for many years after my emigration, in letters. In his witty, crystalline Czech prose he kept me connected to what I had left, and what I needed to forget so that I could remember it again, without pain.

We were fourteen, fifteen years old, and already knew the importance of silence in love.