Ruta Sepetys
Ruta Sepetys
Ruta Sepetys or Rūta Šepetysis a Lithuanian-American writer of historical fiction. She is best known for her novel, Between Shades of Gray, which was a New York Times Bestseller and Carnegie Medal finalist. Sepetys is a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellow and the first American writer of young adult literature to speak at the European Parliament. Her work is published in over forty countries and thirty languages...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 November 1967
CountryUnited States of America
Decisions, they shape our destiny.
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.
Tragedy was a big social event, and everyone wanted in on it.
Let me tell you something 'bout these rich Uptown folk," said Cokie. "They got everything that money can buy, their bank accounts are fat, but they ain't happy. They ain't ever gone be happy. You know why? They soul broke. And money can't fix that, no sir.
A wrongdoing doesn't give us the right to do wrong.
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.
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.
People I didn't know formed a circle around me, sheltering me from view. They escorted me safely back to our jurta, undetected. They didn't ask for anything. They were happy to help someone, to succeed at something, even if they weren't to benefit. We'd been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean. I realized that if we boosted one another, maybe we'd get a little closer.
He threw his burning cigarette onto our clean living room floor and ground it into the wood with his boot. We were about to become cigarettes.
I felt as if I were riding a pendulum. Just as I would swing into the abyss of hopelessness, the pendulum would swing back with some small goodness.
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.
Sometimes there is such beauty in awkwardness.
I leapt eagerly into books. The characters’ lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own.