Lina Vilkas Quotes

“Part of me felt guilty. Was it selfish that I wanted to live, even though my parents were gone?”

“I shut the bathroom door and caught sight of my face in the mirror. I had no idea how quickly it was to change, to fade. If I had, I would have stared at my reflection, memorizing it. It was the last time I would look into a real mirror for more than a decade.”

“I planted a seed of hatred in my heart. I swore it would grow to be a massive tree whose roots would strangle them all.”

“Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth? That morning, my brother’s was worth a pocket watch.”

“He threw his burning cigarette onto our clean living room floor and ground it into the wood with his boot. We were about to become cigarettes.”

″‘Hide them. Keep them safe for me,’ I said, putting my hands on top of his. ‘I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t want them to be destroyed. There’s so much of me, of all of us, in these drawings.‘”

“How could Stalin simply take something that didn’t belong to him, something that a farmer and his family had worked their whole lives for?”

“I scanned the group. Faces spoke to their future. I saw courage, anger, fear and confusion. Others were hopeless. They had already given up.”

“Pardon me? Is that really what she said? These men burst into our home at night, slam her into the mirror-and she asks them to pardon her?”

“Mother was starving herself to feed us.”

“The child let out a soft cry and its tiny fists pummeled the air. Its fight for life had begun.”

“I closed my eyes and tried to think of something, anything, to calm myself. I pictured my sketchbook. I felt my hands stir. Images, like celluloid frames, rolled through my mind.”

″‘Do you understand?’ My father looked at Andrius, hesitant. ‘You can help me find you,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll know it’s you…just like you know Munch. But you must be very careful.‘”

“I clung to my rusted dreams during the times of silence. It was at gunpoint that I fell into every hope and allowed myself to wish from the deepest part of my heart. Komorov thought he was torturing us. But we were escaping into a stillness within ourselves. We found strength here.”

“It is my greatest hope that the pages in this jar stir your deepest well of human compassion. I hope they prompt you to do something, to tell someone. Only then can we ensure that this kind of evil is never allowed to repeat itself.”

“Joana’s freedom had cost me mine.”