Ruta Sepetys Quotes

She is you, she is your mother, your father, your country. She is Poland.

I took several trips to New Orleans and met with people who had intimate knowledge of the underbelly of the city in the 1950s. The meetings were both fascinating and terrifying.

Those memories, they are the coals that shield my heart from frost.

Perhaps tomorrow I would actually put pen to paper.

She held her breath in one hand and her suitcase in the other.

Papa said scientists speculated that from the moon, the earth looked blue. That night I believed it. I would draw it blue and heavy with tears.

Sometimes the truth is dangerous… But we should search for it nonetheless.

You'll have champagne. All girls like champagne.
All girls didn't like champagne. I preferred root beer. Willie preferred anything that smelled like gasoline and burned her throat. She could hold her liquor better than any man, and I wished she was there to help me navigate John Lockwell.

Sometimes we set off down a road thinkin' we're goin' one place and we end up another. But that's okay. The important thing is to start.

Hitler said KdF brought opportunity for everyone, all were equal. But how could all be equal if some were favored?

No Son [ ... ] Not a traitor to your country. Much worse. A traitor to your soul.

But when she sat alone her face looked cheerless and forlorn, full of tears waiting patiently to fall.

We pushed to the edge of recklessness, yet I felt safe.

Some were desperate to remember and others were desperate to forget.

The fact that Cincinnati thought I resembled him in any way sickened me. It made me want to run and hide. When I was a child in Detroit and terrors chased me, I would run to my hiding spot, a crawl space under the front porch of the boardinghouse we lived in. I'd wedge my small body into the cool brown earth and lie there, escaping the ugliness that was inevitably going on above me. I'd plug my ears with my fingers and hum to block out the remnants of Mother's toxic tongue or sharp backhand. It became a habit, humming, and a decade later, I was still doing it. Life had turned cold again, the safety of the cocoon under the porch was gone, and lying in the dirt had become a metaphor for my life.

War is catastrophe. It breaks families in irretrievable pieces. But those who are gone are not necessarily lost.

I knew the legends of the birds. Seagulls were the souls of dead soldiers. Owls were the souls of women. Doves were the recently departed souls of unmarried girls.
Was there a bird for the souls of people like me?

He wasn't ugly, but if he picked a flower, I was fairly certain it would die in his hand.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be taken by anybody else, these pages must be shown.

This is your time, Dan. Grab it and run. Do the stuff you see in the movies. It's the stuff no one gets to do. But you can do it, Matheson. I don't want you calling me in ten years whining that you should have done this and should have done that. As the saying goes, it's later than you think.

The sinking of the Gustloff is the largest maritime disaster, yet the world still knows nothing of it. I often wonder, will that ever change or will it remain just another secret swallowed by war? You

It went on. Each lie I told required another to thicken the paste over the previous. It was useless, like when I learned to crochet and made a long string of loops. Being useless builds character, Miss Paulsen had said. Perhaps she was home now, drinking a weak Earl Grey from last night's tea bag, massaging her taffied scalp.

Krasivaya. It means beautiful, but with strength. Unique.

It's safer for you to stay with the others,' he said.
Safer? He didn't realize.
I was already dead.

War had bled color from everything, leaving nothing but a storm of gray.

The lie came out so easily it frightened me. I used to feel sick to my stomach when I heard Mother tell a lie. How can you do it? How do you live with yourself? I used to wonder. But here I was, lying to Miss Paulsen and smiling while doing it.

Fear is a hunter. But

Do you see, my dear? The proverbs are at play. 'I wept because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.'" I

The German stared at me, a combination of fatigue and frustration. But I understood.
His eyes on the potato said, Emilia, I'm hungry.
The dried blood on his shirt said, Emilia, I'm injured.
But the way he clutched his pack told me the most.
Emilia, don't touch this.

Ships capacity: 1,463
Passengers on board: 10,573
Lifeboats: 22
But then I remembered.
Ten of the lifeboats were missing

I wanted to stay locked away from the pain and destruction. I didn't want to be strong. I didn't want to be the 'smart girl'. I was so very tired. I just wanted it all to be over.

I leapt eagerly into books. The characters' lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own.

Guilt is a hunter.
I was its hostage.

Be in control of your piece, Jo. The minute it takes control of you, you're dead, Willie would tell me.

Stalin has stolen more than lands. Hannelore, he has stolen human dignity. I see it in their forlorn eyes and broken posture. It's all the fault of the Communists.

The old man nodded. "There's a saying, 'Death hath a thousand doors to let out life; I shall find one.' We all have a door that waits. I know that. I accept it. But the children. That's what I struggle with.

They're asking everyone for their name and information. They say we're going to Sassnitz, on the German island of Rügen.' She squeezed my hand.
I bent over and kissed the top of her head. I then leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes.
My name and information.
Who was I?
I looked down at Joana and the children.
Who did I want to be?

His smugness was annoying. This was the type of man who looked at a picture on the wall and instead of admiring the photo, looked at his own reflection in the glass.

The Wilhelm Gustloff was pregnant with lost souls conceived of war. They would crowd into her belly and she would give birth to their freedom.

Mrs. Rimas cried at the mention of the wafer and the traditional Christmas blessing. God grant that we are all together again next year.

Mother was comfort. Mother was home. A girl who lost her mother was suddenly a tiny boat on an angry ocean. Some boats eventually floated ashore. And some boats, like me, seemed to float farther and farther from land

Fate is a hunter. Engines

Each day when the train stopped, we'd lean out of the car and try to count the number of bodies thrown. It grew every day. I noticed Jonas kept track of the children, making marks with a stone on the floor board of the car. I looked at his marks and imagined drawing little heads atop each one - hair, eyes, a nose, and a mouth.

Mother wrapped her arms around Jonas, kissing his hair.

He said nothing, just pulled me down into his lap and wrapped his arms around me.

Light fell, and so did my confidence.

That's a good hustle," I told him.
"We both got a little hustle, don't we?" He pulled on his jacket. "But I like to think we got more heart.

Abandoned or separated from their families, they were forced to battle the beast of war on their own, left with an inheritance of heartache and resposibility for events they had no rile in causing.

I didn't need his criticism. I carried enough guilt on my own. I had done everything wrong. I had the highest marks in school but couldn't master common sense.

More than ten thousand people had been on board the Gustloff. The gruesome details of the sinking would be reported in every world newspaper. The tragedy would be studied for years, become legendary.

If I poured all the lies I had told into the Mississippi, the river would rise and flood the city.

I planted a seed of hatred in my heart. I swore it would grow to be a massive tree whose roots would strangle them all.

your shoes are carrying your most valuable possession - your life. Do not delay. Everything else can be replaced,

Your daughter, your sister. She is salt to the sea,

For some reason, my hair always looked best right before bed, and what good was that?

That sounded like something Mother would say, throwing color onto a black-and-white picture.

I left the jutra to chop wood. I began my walk through the snow, five kilometers to the tree line. That's when I saw it. A tiny silver of gold appeared between shades of gray on the horizon.
I stared at the amber band of sunlight, smiling.
The sun had returned.
I closed my eyes. I felt Andrius moving close. "I'll see you," he said.
"Yes, I will see you," I whispered "I will."
I reached into my pocket and squeezed the stone.

Unless it was Cokie, gifts from men weren't free.

And there Emilia rests. She is safe. She is loved. Affectionately, Clara Christensen

He wanted to know something about me. I leaned over and put my mouth to his ear. It was barely a whisper.
'I'm a murderer.

You love stories, Emilia. Well, the trees hold hundreds of years of stories. Think of it, everything these trees have seen and felt. All of the secrets are inside of them.

So I build my own nest and feather it with thoughts of you.

I'm a binge writer. I work in the music business fulltime, in artist management and developing songwriters and recording artists, and so juggling my job I carve out as much time as I can on the weekends.

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.

But I had learned to read very young. They could never take that away from me.

I looked back to the hole. What if we were digging our own grave?

Truth breaks the chains of silence." Puri puts a trembling hand to her chest. Her voice drops to a whisper.
"It sets us all free.

Why you frettin', Jo? You not sure?"
I inhaled my tears in order to speak. "I'm sure I want to go, but I'm not sure it's possible.Why would they accept me? And if they did, how would I pay for it? I don't want to get my hopes up only to be disappointed. I'm always disappointed."
"Now don't let fear keep you in New Orleans. Sometimes we set off down a road thinkin' we're goin' one place and we end up another. But that's okay. The important thing is to start. I know you can do it. Come on, Josie girl, give those ol' wings a try."
"Willie doesn't want me to."
"So what, you gonna stay here just so you can clean her house and run around with all the naked crazies in the Quarter? You got a bigger story than that.

Thieves and prostitutes. Our mothers were in that car, along with a teacher, a librarian, elderly people, and a newborn baby - thieves and prostitutes.

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.

How did I get here How did I end up in the arms of a boy I barely knew but knew I didn't want to lose I wondered what I would have thought of Andrius in Lithuania. Would I have liked him Would he have liked me

Andrius, I'm ... scared."
He stopped and turned to me. "No. Don't be scared. Don't give them anything Lina, not even your fear.

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Well, I don't know, Lina. But let's just say I've met a lot of dead people.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a match. The two kids both have hand-me-down names of the ill repute." Jesse turned to me. "But actually, I win. You're named after a madam. I'm named after a murderer. So mine's worse.

I became good at pretending. I became so good that after a while the lines blurred between my truth and fiction. And sometimes, when I did a really good job of pretending, I even fooled myself.

They have a baby grand piano, but no one in the family plays. They have shelves of books they've never read, and the tension between the couples was so thick it nearly choked us.

I don't want to see no dead body. Willie ain't in there. She put her walkin' shoes on. She gone to see the Lord.

Tadas was sent to the principal today," announced Jonas at dinner. He wedged a huge piece of sausage into his small mouth.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because he talked about hell," sputtered Jonas, juice from the plump sausage dribbling down his chin.
"Jonas, don't speak with your mouth full. Take smaller pieces," scolded Mother.
"Sorry," said Jonas with his moth stuffed. "It's good." He finished chewing. I took a bite of sausage. It was warm and the skin was deliciously salty.
"Tadas told one of the girls that hell is the worst place ever and there's no escape for all eternity."
"Now why would Tadas be talking of hell?" asked Papa, reaching for the vegetables.
"Because his father told him that if Stalin comes to Lithuania, we'll all end up there.

Yet amidst all that, life has spit in the eye of death.

There's a saying, 'Death hath a thousand doors to let out life; I shall find one.' But the children. That's what I struggle with.' He shook his head. 'Why the children?

I remembered Papa talking about Stalin confiscating peasants' land, tools, and animals. He told them what crops they would produce and how much they would be paid. I thought it was ridiculous. How could Stalin simply take something that didn't belong to him, something that a farmer and his family had worked their whole lives for? "That's communism, Lina," Papa had said.

We'd been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean.

Whether love of friend, love of country, love of God, or even love of enemy - love reveals to us the truly miraculous nature of the human spirit.

Our sense of humor," said Mother, her eyes pooled with laughing tears. "They can't take that away from us, right?

I love Between shades of gray

War had rearranged my priorities. I now clung to memories more than goals or material things. But there were a few irreplaceable items that buoyed my spirit and fight for life. It was at that moment that I realized. Something was missing from my suitcase.

A guilty conscience is not worth extra food.

Engrave your pieces, Jo, and they'll always find their way back to you, said Willie.

Writers of historical fiction would be lost without libraries and archives.

She must have been a nurse. She looked a few years older than me. Pretty. Naturally pretty, the type that's still attractive, even more so, when she's filthy.

Charlie Marlowe never wrote horror, but somehow horror was writing Charlie Marlowe.

This was the type of man who looked at a picture on the wall and instead of admiring the photo, looked at his own reflection in the glass. I

Hello, Josie, they'd say with a half smile, followed by a sigh and sometimes a shake of the head. They acted like they felt sorry for me, but as soon as they were ten steps away, I'd hear one of the words, along with my mother's name. The wealthy women pretended it singed their tongue to say whore. They'd whisper it and raise their eyebrows. Then they'd fake an expression of shock, like the word itself had crawled into their pants with a case of the clap. They didn't need to feel sorry for me. I was nothing like Mother.

I wished I had a friend in the Quarter, someone like Charlotte. Someone I could share secrets with, collapse on her bedroom floor, and spill my guts about Patrick to. I saw so many girls walking arm in arm, laughing, an inexplicable closeness and comfort that they had a protector and confidante. They had someone they could count on.

Sometimes there is such beauty in awkwardness.

That doesn't make him a hero. Our country is doomed, don't you see? Our fate is death, no matter whose hands we fall into.

He opened his eyes and whispered to me. "Kind of incredible. She is you, she is your mother, your father, your country." He kissed her head and leaned down to whisper in my ear.
"She is Poland.

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.

Evil will rule until good men or women choose to act.

What had human beings become? Did war make us evil or just activate an evil already lurking within us?