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Quote by Slavko Goldstein

“All that is done in the name of the revolution is valuable, progressive, and positive because the value and progress of the revolution is unquestionable. It is an inviolable fetish and cult. During the war, the most important virtue for a member of the Communist Party was bravery; after the war it became "revolutionary spirit." And this meant the uncompromising (and ruthless) execution of party decisions, regardless of whether they matched the convictions of the person carrying them out, whether in his opinion they were useful or harmful, wise or stupid, whether they carried within themselves good or evil. Such a revolution, and perhaps every revolution, by its victory carries within itself its own death.”

Quote by Slavko Goldstein

Book:1941: The Year That Keeps Returning
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1941: The Year That Keeps Returning

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Slavko Goldstein

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“Son, there’s nothing right about war. Nothing good ever comes of it. And I’m no hero. Anyone who rallies for war, for so many guns in men’s hands, has never stood shivering in his boots in the middle of a battlefield. And anyone who fights simply to be a man ain’t a man. He doesn’t have enough compassion.” I start to understand then. Maybe it’s war that makes Grandpa look sad sometimes. Maybe it’s the thought that it can happen at any moment or the thought that there will always be war that makes him appear melancholy, like on those afternoons he sits stone-faced in his recliner while Hank Williams’ lonesome voice fills the house, singing of the blue whippoorwill and the weeping robin. Maybe Grandpa wants me to realize that being a soldier doesn’t make someone a hero or a man, but having compassion does.”

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Book:Israelis and Palestinians: From the Cycle of Violence to the Conversation of Mankind
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“The Bright Lights of Sarajevo After the hours that Sarajevans pass queuing with empty canisters of gas to get the refills they wheel home in prams, or queuing for the precious meagre grams of bread they’re rationed to each day, and often dodging snipers on the way, or struggling up sometimes eleven flights of stairs with water, then you’d think the nights of Sarajevo would be totally devoid of people walking streets Serb shells destroyed, but tonight in Sarajevo that’s just not the case The young go walking at stroller’s pace, black shapes impossible to mark as Muslim, Serb or Croat in such dark, in unlit streets you can’t distinguish who calls bread hjleb or hleb or calls it kruh. All take the evening air with stroller’s stride no torches guide them, but they don’t collide except as one of the flirtatious ploys when a girl’s dark shape is fancied by a boy’s. Then the tender radar of the tone of voice shows by its signals she approves his choice. Then match or lighter to a cigarette to check in her eyes if he’s made progress yet. And I see a pair who’ve certainly progressed beyond the tone of voice and match-flare test and he’s about, I think, to take her hand and lead her away from where they stand on two shell scars, where, in ‘92 Serb mortars massacred the breadshop queue and blood-dunked crusts of shredded bread lay on this pavement with the broken dead. And at their feet in holes made by the mortar that caused the massacre, now full of water from the rain that’s poured down half the day, though now even the smallest clouds have cleared away leaving the Sarajevo star-filled evening sky ideally bright and clear for bomber’s eye in those two rain-full shell-holes the boy sees fragments of the splintered Pleiades, sprinkled on those death-deep, death-dark wells splashed on the pavement by Serb mortar shells. The dark boy-shape leads dark girl-shape away to share one coffee in a candlelit café until the curfew, and he holds her hand behind AID flour-sacks refilled with sand”

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Author:Tonny Harrison
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Author:Tonny Harrison
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“Бути нейтральним оповідачем - знак привілейованого стану. Коли ти пишеш про війну в будь-якій граній країні, яким би літнім малятком ти не був, дозволити собі нейтрально потеревенити про війну, піднятися над битвою, даруйте, ти не можеш. А з часом і не захочеш. Бути упередженим оповідачем - о, це так само привілей.”

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Book:Писати війну
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