The Madonnas Of Leningrad Quotes
"It is as though she has been transported into a two-dimensional world, a book perhaps, and she exists only on this page."
"Sometimes it requires all her wits to piece together the world with the fragments she is given."
"The miracle of five white eggs nested in a foam carton."
"Whatever is eating her brain consumes only the fresher memories, the unripe moments."
"One can’t really call it sleep. It is more like disappearing for a few moments at a time."
"The airplanes buzz and drone, but she has stopped flinching."
"In the first week, they crated more than half a million pieces of art and artifacts."
"The awareness that the world is about to change."
"The earth tilts a little more and she feels herself sliding."
"It is like disappearing for a few moments at a time, like a switch being turned off."
"This image she sees, while vaguely familiar, is not herself."
"Even if your parents were Party members, you would never fit in. You’re unusual."
"In sculpture, the male member is always flaccid, a soft little worm."
"Every day, every night since the war began has become infused with a new intensity."
"The possibility that when this is all over, the Soviet Union will be a better place."
"When one walks through the front doors, the entry has a marble floor and a very large Persian carpet."
"What is necessary to please God and to save one’s own soul?"
"In the first place, a knowledge of the true God and a right faith in him."
"I memorized the entire Law of God, all the Roman emperors and their reigns."
"This splendid granite city of fame and calamity."
"The noise is deafening, but they work through it now."
"Someone must remember, or it all disappears without a trace."
"Eat until you see the pattern on the plate so tomorrow we will have nice weather."
"Seventy-five grams of bread. Bread that is half sawdust."
"Their bodies have forgotten how to digest such richness."
"The first desperate pleas of the civilization, they were posted here back when one might still conceivably barter for food."
"To our loved ones at the front," Vera intones and lifts her cup.
"Everything reminds me of you. Last night, a girl came to our camp with a goodwill delegation."
"Write to me, dearest, and tell me everything you can think of. It needn’t be important."
"Give Tatiana a big hug for me. I don’t imagine that Mikhail will endure a hug, but tell him that he must study hard."
"It is a terrible thing to have loved ones, people to whom you are shackled by whatever bonds make their pain yours."
"No one weeps anymore, or if they do, it is over small things, inconsequential moments that catch them unprepared."
"What is heartbreaking is the sight of a single gull lifting effortlessly from a street lamp."
"What is heartbreaking is that there is still beauty in the world."
"The future is always written with a pitchfork on the water."
"It was like waking from the dead. Her muscles and bones are stiff, but her soul reels drunkenly, buffeted by unexpected memories."
"What is left that is heartbreaking? Not death: death is ordinary."
"In their young lives, they have already seen too much, and it has given them a slow and haunted demeanor."
"I think it is like being inside the mother’s womb, very red and dark and safe."
"You are very generous, comrade, but we don’t wish to overtire you in your condition."
"It’s such a wondrous painting because Raphael took these mythical characters, the Virgin Mary and Joseph and the Christ Child, and he reimagined them as real people, an actual family."
"The real miracle is the painting itself, which lifts us and carries us away to this magical world."
"All this is yours, comrades. Can you see? It’s all yours."
"I think she was one of the Madonnas, but I can’t say for certain. There were so many."
"It was like she was saying everything was beautiful."