A guilty conscience is not worth extra food.

Stalin mi aveva portato via la casa e mio padre e ora si era preso anche il mio compleanno.

Tadas was sent to the principal today,” announced Jonas at dinner. He wedged a huge piece of sausage into his small mouth.”Why?” I asked.”Because he talked about hell,” sputtered Jonas, juice from the plump sausage...

Vi siete mai chiesti quanto vale una vita umana? Quella mattina la vita di mio fratello valeva un orologio da taschino.

Well, I don’t know, Lina. But let’s just say I’ve met a lot of dead people.

Jo, they have a baby grand piano, but no one in the family plays. They have shelves of books they’ve never read, and the tension between the couples was so thick it nearly choked us.””Let...

I remembered Papa talking about Stalin confiscating peasants’ land, tools, and animals. He told them what crops they would produce and how much they would be paid. I thought it was ridiculous. How could Stalin...

Good men are often more practical than pretty ” said Mother. “Andrius just happens to be both.

They got everything money can buy, their bank accounts are fat, but they ain’t happy. They ain’t ever gonna be happy. You know why? They soul broke. And money can’t fix that, no sir.

Unless it was Cokie, gifts from men weren’t free.

How did I get here How did I end up in the arms of a boy I barely knew but knew I didn’t want to lose I wondered what I would have thought of Andrius...

But how can they just decide that we’re animals? They don’t even know us,” I said.”We know us,” said Mother. “They’re wrong. And don’t ever allow them to convince you otherwise. Do you understand?

What if this is a horrible mistake?” I croaked. “Oh, it’ll be horrible fine, just a bunch of pretentious rich people with shelves of expensive books they’ve never read.

I felt as if I were riding a pendulum. Just as I would swing into the abyss of hopelessness, the pendulum would swing back with some small goodness.

My husband, Andrius, says that evil will rule until good men or women choose to act. I believe him. This testimony was written to create an absolute record, to speak in a world where our...

And she didn’t judge nobody. She loved everyone equal- accountants, queers, musicians, she welcomed us all, said we were all idiots just the same.

…we’re dealing with two devils who both want to rule hell.

You stand for what is right, Lina, without the expectation of gratitude or reward.

I don’t want to see no dead body. Willie ain’t in there. She put her walkin’ shoes on. She gone to see the Lord.

Sometimes there is such beauty in awkwardness.

We sat and drank in silence. It was something I appreciated about Jesse. He didn’t feel the need to fill every moment with talk or some sort of silly exchange.

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.

I leapt eagerly into books. The characters’ lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own.

They have a baby grand piano, but no one in the family plays. They have shelves of books they’ve never read, and the tension between the couples was so thick it nearly choked us.

But wasn’t there some sort of rule that said parents had to be smarter than their kids? It didn’t seem fair.

I stared at the enormous homes, the landscaping and flower beds immaculate. It was as if dollar bills, instead of leaves, hung from the trees.

People I didn’t know formed a circle around me, sheltering me from view. They escorted me safely back to our jurta, undetected. They didn’t ask for anything. They were happy to help someone, to succeed...