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Quote by Zlata Filipović

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Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Wartime Sarajevo

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Author

Zlata Filipović

Zlata Filipović is a Serbian writer known for her autobiographical novel 'The War is Over, I Feel Nothing'. The book details her life during the Yugoslav Wars and her journey to recovery from the shadows of war. more

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“The best example I know, of this astonishingly stupid attitude towards sport, is that of Franz Ferdinand. His, however, was an achievement with the gun. He used to shoot at Konopist with no less than seven weapons and four loaders, and he once killed more than 4,000 birds, himself, in one day. [A propos of statistics and quite beside the point: a Yorkshireman once drank 52½ pints of beer in one hour.] Now why did Franz Ferdinand do this? Even if he shot for twelve hours at a stretch, without pause for luncheon, it means that he killed six birds in each minute of the day. The mere manual labour, a pheasant every ten seconds for twelve successive hours, is enough to make a road-mender stagger; and there is little wonder that, by the time the unhappy archduke had accumulated his collection of 300,000 head of game, he was shooting with rubber pads on his coat and a bandage round his ears. The unfortunate man had practically stunned himself with gunpowder, long before they bagged him also at Sarajevo.”

“satkah te noćas od sitne usamljenosti dadoh ti ime i prekrih te bojom u tebe odjenuh svu drskost mladosti i sjenu ti dadoh, i nazvah te svojom ni časak stvarnosti u tvom postojanju ni jedna požuda spuštena uz tijelo ničeg što misao tjera nedostajanju ni dašak smrtnosti, ni sjećanje bijelo tobom sagradih sve moje ludosti neuhvatnu čežnju i dalekost sreće sakrih postojanje od svijeta vanjskosti i jedan život nekuda kreće”

“Čekamo da netko dođe i da nas izvede odavde. Iz stana koji nije uništen, ali je sablasan. Čekamo treći maj. Kao da čekamo novu godinu. Jer trećeg maja mora biti bolje. Drugačije. Nije bilo. Samo se na kraju, kad smo završile zakucavanje folija kroz prozore nije više vidjelo ništa. I tako četiri godine. Vedrana Seksan”

“A friend of mine who is familiar with both my messy relationship history and my recent recovery journey asked me the other day, “So where is the line, exactly, between regular love and love addiction?” To which I could only reply, “I’ve got bad news for you, buddy. Nobody really knows.” It’s the same with all addictions. When does a regular drinker become a heavy drinker? And when does a heavy drinker become a problem drinker? And when does a problem drinker become an alcoholic? And when does an alcoholic become a danger to themself and others? It’s often impossible to know exactly when, how, and why these escalations occur. In the rooms of recovery, this is called “the invisible line”—that shady moment when complete dependency sets in, and the addict is no longer capable of living a manageable or dignified life. The invisibility of that line is a large part of the reason that identifying and treating addiction is so difficult. It’s also why addicts of all varieties are so masterful at denying that they have a problem in the first place, and why they are so good at gaslighting and deceiving their loved ones. But if I had to define the difference between regular love and love addiction, I would say that it has to do with the level of intensity—with the sense of urgency, dependency, and desperation that grows by the day until it becomes an obsession, trailing behind it a wreckage of lies, destruction, and self-abandonment. And once that hungry ghost is awakened, it can never really be sated.”

“My mother cried every day, on a cue, as if someone tapped her on a shoulder and said "Go! Now!" She looked thin, and her hair looked disheveled, getting longer, flat on the top with curly remnants from a perm on each side. I didn't know what to say or do partially because she never tried to explain her sudden outbursts, so I thought she wanted us to leave her alone to mourn in peace.”