Decisions, they shape our destiny.

What do you do with all this bank, Josie? Be a lot easier if you just lifted your skirt.” “The only reason I’d lift my skirt is to pull out my pistol and plug you in the head.

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.

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.

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.

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

I looked down at the little pink face in the bundle. A newborn. The child had been alive only minutes but was already considered a criminal by the Soviets.