"During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone â€˜identifiedâ€™ me. Then a woman with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me, and of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected us all and whispered in my earâ€”(we all spoke in whispers there): â€˜Could you describe this?â€™ I said, â€˜I can!â€™ Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face."

-- Anna Akhmatova

#Blue Quotes #Numbness Quotes #Years Quotes

“It's weird, I was such a survivor and so wanted to be a part of life while I was trying to snuff out the life that was inside of me. I had this duality of trying to kill myself with drugs, then eating really good food and exercising and going swimming and trying to be a part of life. I was always going back and forth on some level.”
“There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet.”
“I just love dressing up in everything a man is supposed not to be, in all that vulnerability, sweetness, preciousness and impracticality.”

Source : "Top of the pots". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. November 21, 2003.
“motivation is highest when the probability of success is 50 percent: We don't get involved if the task is too easy or too hard.”

Source : Judith M. Bardwick (1995). “Danger in the Comfort Zone: From Boardroom to Mailroom--how to Break the Entitlement Habit That's Killing American Business”, p.63, AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn
“While it's good that we maintain high standards for companies seeking to claim environmental leadership, I can't help but ponder the hypocrisy of it all: how much more we expect of companies than of ourselves.”
“If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that we would never have been able to descend to the plains.”
“I'd like to explain why you fine young men had to be blown apart to defend this mud hole.”
“By constant dripping, water hollows stone, A signet-ring from use alone grows thin, And the curved plowshare by soft earth is worn.”

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