Sara Novic Quotes & Sayings

Worrying isn't rational. No one makes a conscious decision to freak out about something. — Sara Novic

I tried to think of a singularly American superstition. I'd learned a few from the Uncles - something about not letting one's shoes touch the kitchen table - but those were all imported from the Old World. Perhaps a country of immigrants had never gotten around to commingling the less desirable pieces of their cultures. Either that, or life there wasn't difficult enough to warrant an adult's belief in magic. — Sara Novic

Telling my story was supposed to be a good thing but it had just made everything worse. — Sara Novic

I'd studied English since the first grade but considered it a murky language, one whose grammar seemed to have been made up on the fly — Sara Novic

As a side effect of modern warfare, we had the peculiar privilege of watching the destruction of our country on television. — Sara Novic

Their musings about how and why people stayed in a country under such terrible conditions were what I hated most. I knew it was ignorance, not insight that prompted these questions. they asked because they hadn't smelled the air raid smoke or the scent of singed flesh on their own balconies; they couldn't fathom that such a dangerous place could still harbor all the feelings of home. — Sara Novic

The one who preferred her own sorrows to all the joys in the world had enterd the forest and broken the spell — Sara Novic

I was so tired of his being even-keeled in the face of all that was upsetting and ugly and illogical. — Sara Novic

The first time, the noise that came out of the AK didn't sound like a gunshot. It sounded like a laugh. — Sara Novic

Somewhere in the dead space between house and shelter civilians became soldiers. — Sara Novic

Communism is fascism, in all practical applications," he was saying now. "Can you think of a Communist country sans dictator? — Sara Novic

The more I lied, the closer I came to fitting in. Sometimes I even believed myself. — Sara Novic

Music, I'd heard him say, was like dessert. He could live without it, but life just wasn't as good. — Sara Novic

In the beginning, adults operating somewhere between concern and nosiness had asked questions about the war, and I spoke truthfully about the things I'd seen. But my descriptions were often met with an uncomfortable shining of eyes, as if they were waiting for me to take things back, to say that war or genocide was actually no big deal. They'd offer their condolences, as they'd been taught, then wade through a polite amount of time before presenting an excuse to end the conversation. — Sara Novic

The next night I sat at the table at dinnertime, too, and ate soup and bread with preserves. Before she blew out the candles, Drenka spread a sheet across the sofa and called me over. I felt my spine lengthen like it hadn't during the weeks of sleeping contracted on the kitchen floor, and I stretched my arms over my head and pushed myself deep into the cushions of the couch. — Sara Novic

In the streets we occasionally glimpsed familiar T-shirts within our circles of friends, though we had an unspoken agreement not to mention it. On the weekends we spent our mornings scrubbing the stains from our new old clothes, wringing out each other's memories. — Sara Novic

I stared at my sister. For once she was quiet. Her eyes were glassy and she looked deep in thought or far away, as if she had already crossed the ocean. I wished I knew more about her and less about the patterns of her sickness. She was so small, so busy surviving that we hadn't gotten the chance to be like other sisters, but her hands still fit well in mine. — Sara Novic

The country was at war, but for most people the war was more an idea than an experience, and I felt something between anger and shame that Americans - that I - could sometimes ignore its impact for days at a time. In Croatia, life in wartime had meant a loss of control, war holding sway over every thought and movement, even while you slept. — Sara Novic

It was as if it never occurred to anyone that blocking the incoming roads was the same as blocking the escape routes. — Sara Novic

We entered an era of false alarms. — Sara Novic

...I knew in the end the guilt of one side did not prove the innocence of the other. — Sara Novic

Some people say the Balkans is just inherently violent. That we have to fight a war every fifty years."
"I hope that's not true", I said. — Sara Novic

The realization that my parents, too, felt pain and fear frightened me more than any strangers could. — Sara Novic