A Red Riding Hood out of her depths in the woods of socialism

— Sana Krasikov

Breaking your family's heart was the price you paid for rescuing your own.

— Sana Krasikov

But sometimes this hatred broke like a wave, unexplainably collapsing under its own weight, and before it would begin to well up again, she suddenly felt nothing but pure compassion for him, a kindness and forgiveness that almost broke her heart.

— Sana Krasikov

Florence could feel a constriction in her chest… She had been foolish enough to hope that whatever she was walking into would affect no one but herself. Now the truth was catching up with her at the speed of her galloping heartbeat… Now they had summoned her. And they knew everything

— Sana Krasikov

Florence imagined the Hammer and Sickle metallurgical plant to be an enormous brick factory like the ones in New York. But as she approached she saw it was in fact a small city of its own

— Sana Krasikov

Florence, listen to me carefully. He squeezed her hand. Take whatever that agent offers you. Give him what he wants, and don’t ask too many questions. Get yourself an exit visa as soon as you can. Then leave! Disappear. Forget this wretched place

— Sana Krasikov

Florence, listen to me carefully.... Take whatever that agent offers you. Give him what he wants, and don’t ask too many questions. Get yourself an exit visa as soon as you can. Then leave! Disappear. Forget this wretched place

— Sana Krasikov

From the moment Julian entered the world, Florence had begun to conceive of life as separate from the aspects of its outward circumstances. Over and over, life renewed itself. Over and over, it made itself blind to the death and destruction of the past

— Sana Krasikov

Moscow appeared to her as an Asiatic sprawl of twisting streets, wooden shanties, and horse cabs. But already another Moscow was rising up through the chaos of the first. Streets built to accommodate donkey tracks have been torn open and replaced with boulevards broader than two or three Park Avenues. On the sidewalks, pedestrians were being detoured onto planks around enormous construction pits. A smell of sawdust and metal filings hung in the air

— Sana Krasikov

My mother had been in the Soviet whirlpool for eleven years by this point. Enough time, I imagine, to unlearn the bourgeois habits of her native Brooklyn, to accustom herself to the farting and shouting of her neighbors, to doing her washing by hand in the collective tub, to keeping her dry food locked up in her wardrobe

— Sana Krasikov