We'd been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean.

I wasn't certain of anything anymore, except that New Orleans was a faithless friend and I wanted to leave her.

It amazed me how some people could touch an instrument and create something so beautiful, and when others tried, like me, it just sounded like mangled noise.

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 in Lithuania. Would I have liked him Would he have liked me

Whether love of friend, love of country, love of God, or even love of enemy—love reveals to us the truly miraculous nature of the human spirit.

Was it harder to die, or harder to be the one who survived?

My art teacher had said that if you breathed deeply and imagined something, you could be there. You could see it, feel it. During our standoffs with the NKVD, I learned to do that. 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 there.