43 Quotes About Balkans


  • Author Aleksandar Hemon
  • Quote

    The writer does not dare dream of giving the best of his individuality. No, he must never express his anger. The vacillating demands of mediocrity must be satisfied. Amuse the people, be their clown, give them platitudes about which they can laugh, shadows of truth which they can hold as truths.

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  • Author Annie Ward
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    Ethan was American, and so had a great capacity for indignation, forgiveness, and a firm belief in the powers of individual action. The Balkan people were not like that. They had failed, they had faltered, and they had been mistreated, lied to, robbed from, and forgotten. Outrage was for people who thought they could make a difference.

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  • Author Kapka Kassabova
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    All is one. Don't let me forget this, don't let the bastards divide me again. Our tragedy is fragmentation. It begins as a state of mind and ends up as destiny. It is the tragedy of our family of nations who hobble across this great peninsula, this exquisitely set Earth, like an army of blind soldiers a thousand years old looking for a place to rest. Let them rest. Forgive them, forgive me, forgive us. Our fear drove us insane and melancholy.

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  • Author Annie Ward
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    If you write anything meaningful over there, June, keep it far away from this city. They will turn a story about glue-addicted gypsy children in the Balkans into an animated musical about a tribe of pixie-sized fairy-dust-loving flamenco dancers who live happily ever after with their dancing bears.

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  • Author Peter Maas
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    Bosnia is known as the powder keg of Yugoslavia, which itself is known as the powder keg of the Balkans, which in turn is reputed to be the powder keg of Europe. I would like to lengthen the list a bit by noting that Slobodan Milosevic was the powder keg of Bosnia. He is also one of the most extraordinary men you could hope to meet in your lifetime, a Halley's Comet of dictators, appearing once or twice a century.p. 199

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  • Author Flora Sandes
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    I had always pictured the Albanian peasants as a very fine picturesque race of men wearing spotless native costume, and slung about with fascinating looking daggers and curious weapons of all kinds, but the great majority of those I saw, more especially in the small towns, were a very degenerate looking race indeed.

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