Albanians Quotes

It is now necessary to face the truth and to acknowledge against all prejudices that the struggle that the Albanian tribe is leading today is a natural and unavoidable historic struggle for a different political life than that experienced under Turkish rule - different also from that which its neighbours Serbia, Greece and Montenegro would like to force upon the Albanians. ~ Dimitrije Tucovic

The most important thing is that Milosevic agreed to sit at the negotiating table with the Kosovo Albanians. ~ Boris Yeltsin

He sat down with a dour face. "Ah, Shqipëria!" he said dropping his head. "Albania will never become Albania with Albanians in it!" He glanced at Jude. "Don't ask. ~ Paul Alkazraji

I don't know nothing about communism. But I know the Albanians loved me. Same reason as anyone else loves me. Because I made them laugh. ~ Norman Wisdom

She remembered wondering what it was that the Albanians exported in such an anonymous way, but when on one occasion she had looked it up, she found that their only export was electricity - which, if she remembered her high school physics correctly, was unlikely to be moved around in lorries. ~ Douglas Adams

[The Albanians] seem to be rather backward and primitive people ... they can be as faithful as a dog; that is one of the traits of the primitive. Our Chuvash were the same. The Russian tsars always used them for their bodyguards. ~ Joseph Stalin

The complex of seven luxurious homes, swimming pools and lavish stables was surrounded by a twelve-foot wall patrolled by what we believed to be Albanians armed with Skorpion machine pistols. This was strange, given that the family was in the wholesale floristry business. Maybe flower theft was a bigger problem in northern Greece than most people realized. ~ Terry Hayes

Hasan Pasha also gave the green light for Turks and Greeks to take whatever action they pleased against any Albanians they found: killing them was not a crime. Continuing his march, he executed all the Albanians he encountered, setting fire to a monastery where other were hiding and offering five sequins for every Albanian head brought him. ~ Mark Mazower

Churches and mosques you shall not heed / The religion of Albanians is Albanism ~ Pashko Vasa

Even if we have to go without bread, we Albanians do not violate principles. We do not betray Marxism - Leninism. ~ Enver Hoxha

Albania's future is towards Christianity, since it is connected with it culturally, old memories, and its pre-Turkish nostalgia. With the passing of time, the late Islamic religion that came with the Ottomans should evaporate (at first in Albania and then in Kosova), until it will be replaced by Christianity or, to be more exact, Christian culture. Thus from one evil (the prohibition of religion in 1967) goodness will come. The Albanian nation will make a great historical correction that will accelerate its unity with its mother continent: Europe ~ Ismail Kadare

I support the recommendations made by the International Crisis Group. The primary responsibility is for Kosovo Albanians to demonstrate that their treatment of minorities is adequate. ~ Emma Bonino

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. ~ Flora Sandes

Religion mattered at a deep level, which must help to explain why none of these people went over to Islam; but in most cases it did not direct their lives, nor did it prevent some of them from cultivating their connection with a powerful relative who was a Muslim convert. Whilst the fact that they were Catholics from one of Christendom's frontier zones may have given them an enhanced sense of their Catholicism, the fact that they were Albanians, connected by language, blood and history to Ottoman subjects and Ottoman territory, gave them an ability to see things also from something more like an Ottoman perspective ~ Noel Malcolm

I get angry real quick, but I also cool down just as fast. Albanians don't want to deal with anything in the moment. ~ Action Bronson

Why the Albanians had created the institution of the guest, exalting it above all other human relations, even those of kinship. "Perhaps the answer lies in the democratic character of this institution," he said, setting himself to think his way through the matter. "Any ordinary man, on any day, can be raised to the lofty station of a guest. The path to that temporary deification is open to anybody at any time.[ ... ] Given that anyone at all can grasp the sceptre of the guest," he went on, "and since that sceptre, for every Albanian, surpasses even the king's sceptre, may we not assume that in the Albanian's life of danger and want, that to be a guest if only for four hours or twenty-four hours, is a kind of respite, a moment of oblivion, a truce, a reprieve, and - why not? - an escape from everyday life into some divine reality? ~ Ismail Kadare

They were always Albanians. You know what that means. Some Catholics, some Orthodox. And some, in time, were Muslims, too. But the first religion of the Albanian, as they say, is Albania. ~ Jason Goodwin

The boat was vacuum-packed with Albanians, four generations to a family: great-grandmother, air-dried like a chilli pepper, deep red skin and a hot temper; grandmother, all sun-dried tomato, tough, chewy, skin split with the heat; getting the kids to rub olive oil into her arms; mother, moist as a purple fig, open everywhere - blouse, skirt, mouth, eyes, a wide-open woman, lips licking the salt spray flying from the open boat. Then there were the kids, aged four and six, a couple of squirs, zesty as lemons. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Do whatever you want, as long as you say you want to be a part of Europe. And then you'll get away with anything. Look, the Albanians do God knows what. They sell weapons and women, they take hostages. And the world forgives then, as long as they're pro-Europe and pro-NATO. They'll forgive us, too. That's the trend in today's world. ~ Vladimir Lorchenkov

It is said that in those days one could hear seventy languages in the streets of Istanbul. The vast Ottoman Empire, shrunken and weakened though it now was, had made it normal and natural for Greeks to inhabit Egypt, Persians to settle in Arabia and Albanians to live with Slavs. Christians and Muslims of all sects, Alevis, Zoroastrians, Jews, worshippers of the Peacock Angel, subsisted side by side in the most improbable places and combinations. There were Muslim Greeks, Catholic Armenians, Arab Christians and Serbian Jews. Istanbul was the hub of this broken-felloed wheel, and there could be found epitomised the fantastical bedlam and babel, which although no one realised it at the time, was destined to be the model and precursor of all the world's great metropoles a hundred years hence, by which time Istanbul itself would, paradoxically, have lost its cosmopolitan brilliance entirely. It would be destined, perhaps, one day to find it again, if only the devilish false idols of nationalism, that specious patriotism of the morally stunted, might finally be toppled in the century to come. ~ Louis De Bernieres

They are Nietzsche's over-men, these primitive Albanians - something between kings and tigers. ~ Henry Noel Brailsford

What are you doing?" she finally asked. "Just thinking about my day. What are you doing?" "Trying to find Jace. Have you seen her?" "Trying to find her? Why? Is it because she's Albanian?" "I'm trying to ... wait ... what?" "You hate her because she's Albanian?" "I don't hate - " "Is it just Albanians you hate, or is it all East Europeans?" "What are you talking about?" "Wow. I had no idea you were like this." Another sister-Crow showed up. "Like what?" "Rachel hates Eastern Europeans." "I do not!" "So you hate all Europeans? Is that what you're saying?" "No!" "My God, Rachel." The other sister-Crow shook her head, disgust on her face as she walked off. "I'm really disappointed in you." "Wait ... " Rachel glared down at Annalisa. "Jesus Christ." "So you hate the Christian God, too? ~ Shelly Laurenston

Some Albanians who have worn a veil say it creates a kind of freedom by giving them anonymity and symbolic invulnerability when outside the home. ~ Antonia Young