Quotes & Sayings About Sarajevo

Quite clearly, Europe had come apart and millions had died not because of the shifting of great historical forces or the accidents of fate or destiny, the several bullets of Sarajevo, colonial competition, or anything else. It was because Orfeo had slipped from his seat in the office of the attorney Giuliani and been carried upon the flood, like a corked bottle full of shit, until he had lodged upon a platform at the Ministry of War, where his feverish hand and only half-innocent imagination had been directing the machinery of nations in homage to the exalted one and the holy blessed sap. — Mark Helprin

World War III will be triggered off not by suppressed nationalists seeking political independence, as happened the first time around when the Serbs at Sarajevo shot the heir to the Austrian throne, but by some semiliterate, whacked-out "loner" who lobs a rocket into a nuclear arsenal in order to impress Brooke Shields. — Philip Roth

In the end, after advice from the Foreign Office, she decided make a three-day visit to Bosnia, still slowly recovering from civil war, in the company of the distinguished journalist Lord Deedes. He recalled not only her gentle sense of humour but her ability to listen and to communicate the uncommunicable. When she walked around Sarajevo's largest cemetery she encountered a mother tending her son's grave. 'There was no language barrier,' he wrote. 'The two women gently embraced. Watched this scene from a distance, I sought in my mind who else could have done this. Nobody. — Andrew Morton

EVER SINCE 29 SEPTEMBER, 1938, discussions about war and peace in Europe have revolved around the same, fearful question: will this be a Sarajevo or a Munich? In other words: can a great deal of diplomacy achieve a shaky balance, or must evil be crushed by force? We know that, in both cases, a war was the result, we know that everything went wrong afterwards, but each time we come back to those two cities, those contrapuntal reference points for the twentieth — Geert Mak

We can work together to produce better footballers for both FK Sarajevo and maybe Cardiff City and maybe even to play for other clubs. We hope this will be well received by everybody and enhance good relations between Malaysia and Bosnia. — Vincent Tan

A modern soldier returning from combat - or a survivor of Sarajevo - goes from the kind of close-knit group that humans evolved for, back into a society where most people work outside the home, children are educated by strangers, families are isolated from wider communities, and personal gain almost completely eclipses collective good. — Sebastian Junger

I was born on July 23rd, 1906, in Sarajevo in the province of Bosnia, which then belonged to the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy and later, in 1918, became part of Yugoslavia. — Vladimir Prelog

In Sarajevo and in Syria, these are societies - in Bosnia, in Serbia, in Kosovo, in Syria - where ethnicities live side by side and intermarry for long periods of time until it becomes valuable to exploit the division. And yes, the division's there because you can always revert back to history, you can always inflame it, but it is manipulated for political ends. — Anne-Marie Slaughter

I had the feeling that Sarajevo was the perfect place to shoot the film I wanted to shoot. It is the perfect illustration of purgatory. — Jean-Luc Godard

In 1914, Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian imperial heir, was shot and killed by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo. Do you know the motive behind the act?
It was in retaliation for the subjugation of the Sebs in Austria.
It was not.Franz Ferdinand had stated his intention to introduce reforms favorable to the Serbs in his empire. Had he survived to ascend the throne, he would have made a revolution unnecessary. In plain terms, he was killed because he was going to give the rebels what they were shouting for. They needed a despot in the palace in order to seize it.
What's good for reform is bad for the reformers — Loren D. Estleman

The hagaddah came to Sarajevo for a reason. It was here to test us, to see if there were people who could see that what united us was more than what divided us. That to be a human being matters more than to be a Jew or a Muslim, Catholic or Orthodox. p. 361 — Geraldine Brooks

Women should not be so mean to end up their life at the kitchen after they get married. they should take part in everything that is happening around the world.women's part of society and also part of world. enjoy your life and smile. — Sarajevo Sara

If this city is to die, it won't be because of the men on the hills, it will be because of the people in the valley. When they're content to live with death, to become what the men on the hills want them to be, then Sarajevo will die. — Steven Galloway

I tell you," he [Milosevic] continued, "Izetbegovic has earned Sarajevo by not abandoning it. He's one tough guy. It's his". These words were probably the most astonishing and unexpected of the conference. — Richard Holbrooke

Andras Riedlmayer described a colleague who survived the siege of Sarajevo. In the winter, the scholar and his wife ran out of firewood, and so began to burn their books for heat and cooking. 'This forces one to think critically,' Riedlmayer remembered his friend saying. 'One must prioritize. First you burn old college textbooks, which you haven't read in thirty years. Then there are the duplicates. But eventually, you're forced to make tougher choices. Who burns today: Dostoevsky or Proust?' I asked Riedlmayer if his friend had any books left when the war was over. 'Oh yes,' he replied, his face lit by a flickering smile. 'He still had many books. Sometimes, he told me, you look at the books and just choose to go hungry. — Matthew Battles

I will not live in a city where dead bodies lie abandoned in the streets, and you will not tell the world I do. — Steven Galloway

Then down came the lid
the day was lost, for art, at Sarajevo. World-politics stepped in, and a war was started which has not ended yet: a "war to end war." But it merely ended art. It did not end war. — Wyndham Lewis

On one occasion, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jeremy Irons and myself were due to appear at the Sarajevo film festival and were turned off a UN plane on orders from Geneva. We had to get local journalists to transport the films in for us. I tell you this only to demonstrate that festivals can be a lifeline. But, after all the difficulties I'd had in getting there, in 1996 I found myself being flown in on a four-seater RAF plane as an official guest, endorsed by the British Embassy. Ironically, the film I was to present was Mission: Impossible. — Vanessa Redgrave

To set their sufferings alongside the sufferings of another people was to compare them (which hell was worse?), demoting Sarajevo's martyrdom to a mere instance. — Susan Sontag

It's really make sense when it's does not make sense — Sarajevo Sara

In the exhibition at Galerie Perrotin, they have the Sarajevo painting - I think it's very good to nail down this story of Pol Pot and other people, not all dictators but most of them. — Erro

After the allied victory of 1918, at the end of my father's war, the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies. In the space of just seventeen months, they created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. And I have spent my entire career - in Belfast and Sarajevo, in Beirut and Baghdad - watching the people within those borders burn. — Robert Fisk

If you do a story about a British journalist rescuing a child from Sarajevo, then Sarajevo just becomes an exotic location, and the story's about this British journalist. — Michael Winterbottom

The Anarchists set off World War I with a gunshot in Sarajevo - but they faded away. It wasn't that the police drove them out of business. The ideology had nowhere to go except into permanent negativity. — Pete Hamill

I pray Cardiff get back to the Premier League. If I sell Cardiff, I will buy another club in the U.K. I have a club in Sarajevo. The fans are fantastic. The people who run the club are incredible. They really motivate me. I'm looking at another club in Europe and then the MLS. — Vincent Tan

The assassination at Sarajevo was certainly the crucial precedent of the European war that its conspirators had sought, but was not the historical cause ... The assassination acted as a lever, prying the various powers into predictable paths. — J. Bowyer Bell

Grief produces an abundant energy that must find a way to burn itself up. And that is the fundamental problem, one that can take a lifetime to exhaust. — Bill Carter

For 1,300 days of Sarajevo's drama, important people in the world who were supposed to act kept their eyes closed, ... But not you. You were not silent. Your voice was clear. — Alijia Izetbegovic

Sarajevo was this beautiful city, very cosmopolitan, multiethnic, full of wonderful people, artists and writers and poets and Serbs and Muslims and Croats, and living side by side. And then this medieval siege, and it was a medieval siege, came, and the Bosnian Serbs were on the hills lobbing in rockets and grenades and mortars. — Janine Di Giovanni

What you see is what you see, but that is never everything. Sarajavo is Sarajevo whatever you see or don't see. America is America. The past and future exist without you. And what you don't know about me is still my life. What I don't know about you is still your life. Nothing at all depends on you seeing it or not seeing it. I mean, who are you? You don't have to see or know everything. — Aleksandar Hemon

I am deeply grateful to the citizens of Sarajevo and the Sarajevo Canton assembly for bestowing upon me this incredible honor of citizenship. I am so proud to now be a part of such an extraordinary part of the world and fellow citizen to the people I deeply love and admire. — Angelina Jolie

Syria may appear to be a small country, but it is just the type of entangled conflict that can lead to a world catastrophe. It does not take much imagination to see Syria as the Sarajevo of the 21st century, leading to world war. — Ahmed Zewail

Some people accused me of being pro-Muslim in Bosnia, but I realised that our job is to give all sides an equal hearing, but in cases of genocide you can't just be neutral. You can't just say, 'Well, this little boy was shot in the head and killed in besieged Sarajevo and that guy over there did it, but maybe he was upset because he had an argument with his wife.' No, there is no equality there, and we had to tell the truth. — Christiane Amanpour

The men on the hills told her that she hated them, and they did everything they could to make it true. She did not fight very hard. It was an easy thing to do. She wonders whether it would have been possible to behave any differently. She hopes it is. She hopes that, somewhere in the city, there are people who are resisting the temptation to turn these men into devils, to say that all men are like them, to oppose their very existence the way they always said the people of Sarajevo did. — Steven Galloway

I have seen children shot in El Salvador, Algeria, Guatemala, Sarajevo, but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport. — Chris Hedges

I love football now. I have a club in Sarajevo, and I love that. The fans are fantastic. The people who run the club are incredible, honest people, and they really motivate me. — Vincent Tan

I have two homes, like someone who leaves their hometown and/or parents and then establishes a life elsewhere. They might say that they're going home when they return to see old friends or parents, but then they go home as well when they go to where they live now. Sarajevo is home, Chicago is home. — Aleksandar Hemon

I was eight when I left Sarajevo, so I didn't really know very much about my culture and it was so important for me to go back to my roots and meet the people. — Zana Marjanovic

It screamed downward, splitting air and sky without effort. A target expanded in size, brought into focus by time and velocity. There was a moment before impact that was the last instant of things as they were. Then the visible world exploded. — Steven Galloway