Quotes from Slavenka Drakuli?

I realize that I only have words and that, from time to time, as I hold them in my arms I am less lonely.

She wonders what else she will have to give up and what is the minimum of things with which one can survive without losing the feeling that one is human?

Why communism failed: it failed because of distrust, because of a fear for the future. Because deep down no body believed in a system that was continuously unable to provide for its life citizen's basic needs for forty years or more.

A ipak, trebao mi je ?itav život da shvatim kako svi ljudi nisu jednaki i kako ?ine samo ono što mogu, da daju samo koliko imaju - i da je to dragocjeno.

How is a woman to tell the story of her life and not stumble upon men?

Every public space is like a billboard, with messages from the collective subconscious of the nation. There one can read passivity, rage indifference, fear, double standards, subversion, bad economy, a twisted definition of 'public' itself, the whole Weltanschauung - an entire range of emotions and attitudes is exposed.

Europe has another meaning for me. Every time I mention that word, I see the Bosnian family in front of me, living far away from whatever they call home and eating their own wonderful food because that's all that is left for them. The fact remains that after fifty years, it was possible to have another war in Europe; that it was possible to change borders; that genocide is still possible even today.

Humor is the only way to overcome depression

Only when there is no privacy can there be total control

It's hard to recognize discrimination when you live with it

Here, in the camp, she could tell any old story, these people would have no choice but to believe her. That is not to say that refugee women like her lie, merely that they are uprooted. Their stories barely mean anything even to themselves now. No one listens to them, which is almost like not existing at all.

Na koncu konca, što je ljubav? Sad mi se ?ini da je to tek rije? za ?itav niz osje?aja, od nježnosti do solidarnosti i strasti. Jer ne treba zaboraviti da je jezik neprecizan instrument, za razliku od slikarstva ili muzike. Ljubav je zajedni?ki nazivnik, obi?na košara u koju ?ovjek trpa svašta. Svaštara, dakle.

war is merely a general term, a collective noun for so many individual stories. War is every individual, it is what happened to that individual, how it happened, how it changed that person's life. For her, war is this child she had to give birth to.

Svatko je dužan napraviti najbolje što može od onoga što ga je zapalo, jer smisao života je upravo življenje samo. Postojati, usprkos svemu. Osje?ati, gledati, sudjelovati. Veseliti se. Nije na dana druga šansa, drugi život.

Her body lies in the bed like an inanimate object, an emptied bellow or shopping bag. Nothing has changed with her departure from the camp. Her body is still in their power, even more so now. Only now does S. understand that a woman's body never really belongs to the woman. It belongs to others—to the man, the children, the family. And in wartime to soldiers.

Her mother, an employee with a state-owned company, is a Serb. Her father, an engineer, is a Muslim, which means that S. is neither one nor the other. That is why S. thinks she is exempt from alignment. This is what she believed until the armed men and soldiers arrived in her mountain village that same day. Now, however, she sees that for her war began the moment others started dividing and labelling her, when nobody asked her anything any more.

She is awake. Again she thinks about fear. Until then, she had not been aware of fear, she had been convinced that she did not feel fear, not even when they had taken the group of men out from the gym, or when she had heard the burst of gunfire. She listens. She knows now that fear is the absence of all emotion, it is emptiness, it is as if your whole body is drained of blood all at once.

Uvijek zamišljamo da ?emo bliskim osobama sve sti?i re?i i objasniti, pokazati kako ih razumijemo i volimo. Iznenadna smrt nepravedna je i za onog koji ostaje.

U ljubavi sam vidjela spas. Ljubav je bila moja religija. ?ovjek valjda ima potrbu izmisliti nešto poput boga. što je drugo moglo slijediti nego još ve?e razo?aranje? Jer spasa nema.

Yes I don't like to live here,' she said, more to herself than me. Then she turned toward me: 'But if I have learned anything from my life, it's that since I don't belong anywhere, only the movement matters.

Neke veze je naprosto teško prekinuti, sve se u tebi odupire, a svaki novi susret podupire suludu nadu da ?e se nešto dogoditi i da ?ete ponovo biti zajedno, kao nekada.

Ovako formulirana, na papiru, njegova se odluka doima stvarnijom. Jednako tako je i sidejama, postaju jasnije tek kad ih napiše. No zaboravio je kako ljudi nisu ideje, rije?i upu?ene njoj mogu izazvati posljedice.

Dok je svirao, bio je druga?iji, mekši, blaži, otvoreniji. Kad bi ga pratila, zajedni?ko je sviranje, baš kao i u?enje, stvaralo nevidljive niti koje su ih ?vrsto vezale jedno za drugo.

Ve? su oboje bili navikli me?usobno podijeliti svaku misao, svaku novu ideju i doživljaj. Bez tog odjeka, bez reakcije onog drugoga, ništa kao da nije imalo smisla. Ve? su stvorili odnos u kojem su se osje?ali dobro, ve? su postali ovisni jedno o drugome, ogledali se jedno u drugome.