3 Quotes by Oksana Zabuzhko

Taking cruelty for strength is the most common mistake of youth. Youth only knows life by the intensity of its own feelings – a continuous explosive fortissimo with a foot on the pedal. Youth knows nothing of that supreme sensitivity, the true sensitivity of the strong that denies cruelty; youth has no inkling of the force with which a barely audible pianissimo can strike under your heart.

The city hung on him, weighed him down with stone on all sides; it clung to him with the tar of dozens of eyes he could see, and hundreds more he couldn’t. Lord, how much easier things were in the forest.

Sometimes I get a bit scared – love generally is a scary thing, happy love no less than unhappy, only for some reason no one ever talks about that.