Dubravka Ugrešić

Her mind still worked, her feet still moved, she could walk, though only with the help of a walker, but she did walk, and she was a human being who knew for certain that beans are best in salad and that old age is a terrible calamity.

The invisibility in which we live next to one another is appalling, Kukla thought.

The foreign country is where no one greets us upon arrival . . .

You're as handsome as Apollo, you're not picking your nose, you're not stingy and you're not talking too much. There's nothing at all with you, announced Pupa in the tone of a doctor who was a hundred per cent sure of her diagnosis.

Why did you leave your homeland? Because for the child who sleeps like an angel in other languages, my people say that he sleeps like a slaughtered one!

No one is interested in real victims, or real criminals. Not local courts, not their fellow citizens, not publishers, and not readers. Everyone simply refuses to believe them. An imaginary crime is much more convincing; reality is too real. They can only identify with invented crime, only paper evil can excite them.