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.
You stand for what is right, Lina, without the expectation of gratitude or reward.
I wasn’t certain of anything anymore, except that New Orleans was a faithless friend and I wanted to leave her.
You like me, Josie Moraine. You just don’t know it yet.
Was it harder to die, or harder to be the one who survived?
I became good at pretending. I became so good that after a while the lines blurred between my truth and fiction. And sometimes, when I did a really good job of pretending, I even fooled myself.
What had human beings become? Did war make us evil or just activate an evil already lurking within us?
Per aspera ad astra, Papa,′ I whispered. Through hardship to the stars.
How foolish to believe we are more powerful than the sea or the sky.
I wanted to stay locked away from the pain and destruction. I didn’t want to be strong. I didn’t want to be the ‘smart girl’. I was so very tired. I just wanted it all to be over.
War is catastrophe. It breaks families in irretrievable pieces. But those who are gone are not necessarily lost.
Killers aren’t always assassins. Sometimes, they don’t even have blood on their hands.
Just when you think this war has taken everything you loved, you meet someone and realize that somehow you still have more to give.
Mother was comfort. Mother was home. A girl who lost her mother was suddenly a tiny boat on an angry ocean. Some boats eventually floated ashore. And some boats, like me, seemed to float farther and farther from land.
War had bled color from everything, leaving nothing but a storm of gray.
Yet amidst all that, life has spit in the eye of death.
His smugness was annoying. This was the type of man who looked at a picture on the wall and instead of admiring the photo, looked at his own reflection in the glass.
You love stories, Emilia. Well, the trees hold hundreds of years of stories. Think of it, everything these trees have seen and felt. All of the secrets are inside of them.
What determines how we remember history and which elements are preserved and penetrate the collective consciousness? If historical novels stir your interest, pursue the facts, history, memories, and personal testimonies available. These are the shoulders that historical fiction sits upon. When the survivors are gone we must not let the truth disappear with them. Please, give them a voice.
Enough studying, Joana. Sometimes living life is more instructive than studying it.