Rosemary Sullivan QUOTES

1 " But sex as a physical act is merely athletics, a momentary relief. What it needs to be powerful is desire, and the strongest element of desire is longing. It's in the work. Desider-, sidus: from the stars. The longing that reaches beyond space and time. "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Labyrinth of Desire: Women, Passion, and Romantic Obsession

2 " When we fall in love at a glance, the question we should ask ourselves (and this would apply to both men and women) is, What is it that we long for? Or perhaps, What are we lacking so that we can turn life in the direction we want? Creativity? Confidence? Authority? Recklessness? Irresponsibility? Or even darkness? Perhaps the lover is the outlaw in ourselves we don't quite have the nerve to claim. (p. 34) "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Labyrinth of Desire: Women, Passion, and Romantic Obsession

3 " Fascism counts on people's credulity, on their craving to believe, on their fear that there is nothing to believe. "

― Rosemary Sullivan , The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation

4 " Most people who fall obsessively in love claim that it happens precipitously, unexpectedly [...]
But I believe there's almost always a prerequisite. Falling in love in this way will usually occur at a time of transition. We may not be conscious of it, but something has ended and something new must begin. Romantic obsession is like a cataclysm breaking up the empty landscape. Like a strange exotic plant, it grows in arid soil. (pp. 27-28) "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Labyrinth of Desire: Women, Passion, and Romantic Obsession

5 " What would it mean to be born Stalin’s daughter, to carry the weight of that name for a lifetime and never be free of it? "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

6 " In attempting to determine how Adolf Hitler had taken control, the US Office of Strategic Services commissioned a report in 1943 that explained his strategy: “Never to admit a fault or wrong; never to accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time; blame that enemy for everything that goes wrong; take advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind.”8 Soon hyperbole, extremism, defamation, and slander become commonplace and acceptable vehicles of power. "

― Rosemary Sullivan , The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation

7 " When Rayle later submitted a mandatory report to the State Department on the defector’s “personality” and her “adaptability to different environments,” he described Svetlana as “the most completely cooperative defector I have ever met.” He said she’d remained cheerful and optimistic throughout the week as they waited in the safe house, even as she took in the shock that the Americans were refusing her asylum. As Rayle put it, “She recognizes that she cannot be considered a normal, ordinary human being and that her actions have political implications. . . . You’ll find her a warm, friendly person who responds to warmth and friendliness. I think you’ll find her genuinely likeable.” He added, “She is a very stable person.”21 But he warned that she seemed quite naive, as if she’d never lived “in any real world,” and would need help in finding her way in the West. "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

8 " When they were finally alone, Brajesh told Svetlana, with a calm resignation that was both disconcerting and moving, “Sveta, I know that I will die today.” He said he had had a dream of a white bullock pulling a cart. In India when you have that dream, it means death is coming.22 She did not believe him. At seven a.m. that Monday, he pointed to his heart and then to his head and said that he could feel something throbbing. And then he died. Into her mind came the memory of her father’s death, the only other death she had witnessed. She recalled her father’s outrageous struggle, his fear in the face of death, his terrifying last gesture of accusation. Singh’s death was quick and peaceful, his last gesture toward his heart. She thought, Each man got the death he deserved. With Singh’s death, Svetlana felt that something had changed in her. “Some inner line of demarcation” had been drawn. Something was totally lost. She did not yet know what this meant. Oddly, she also felt a kind of peace. She did not cry. "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

9 " Buried in the minds of those of us who are lucky is a childhood landscape, a place of magic and imagination, a safe place. It is foundational, and we will return to it in memory and dreams throughout our lives. "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

10 " The truth was that Svetlana did not know what love was. Some deep part of her probably believed she couldn’t be loved. She was still looking for a romanticized, idealized substitute for love. In this she was not unlike many women, though perhaps her case was extreme. She felt she needed a man to invent her or complete her. Her desperation came from the terror of being alone, but who among the men she was drawn to would bind themselves to Stalin’s daughter and take on that darkness? "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

11 " Svetlana did not know how to be alone. Alone, she felt totally exposed. She thought she would be safe if only she could entwine her life in another, but then, once she had achieved this, she would feel suffocated, a pattern that would take her decades to break, if she ever succeeded. "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

12 " disposed "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

13 " How strange that the bully, unmasked, is always awash in self-pity. "

― Rosemary Sullivan , The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation

14 " Russia is quickly (in my opinion) sliding back into the past—with that awful former KGB-SPY now as an acting president! I do hope and believe the people will not vote him into the Presidency—but, then of course elections always could be rigged. . . . The "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

15 " All of them knew me, too. They knew that I had been a bad daughter and that my father had been a bad father, but that he had loved me all the same, as I loved him.”21 This was the one fact she had to hold on to, as if, were she to let go of this belief, she would disappear. Once she said, “It was as though my father were at the center of a black circle and anyone who ventured inside vanished or was destroyed in one way or another. "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

16 " house nearby and was given the room where "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

17 " Anti-Semitism there was mild in comparison to that in many other European countries. Yet the Netherlands transported more Jews to their deaths in extermination camps in the east than any other country in Western Europe. Of the 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands, 107,000 were deported and only 5,500 returned. "

― Rosemary Sullivan , The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation

18 " He said God loved me, even if I was Stalin’s daughter.”7 The remark suggests a depth of loneliness that is devastating. "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

19 " She was thirty-five. It is not a comfortable age. If one is still alone, one believes one will stay alone. Her children, now sixteen and eleven, were at school. Katya had her compulsory Pioneer meetings, and Joseph had joined the Komsomol. Svetlana recalled, “I was melancholy, irritable, inclined towards hopeless pessimism; more than once I had contemplated suicide; I was afraid of dark rooms, of the dead, of thunderstorms; of uncouth men, of hooligans in the streets and drunks. My own life appeared to me very dark, dull, and without a future.”2 Beneath Svetlana’s carefully controlled exterior, there existed sorrows and suspicions, rages and frustrations, psychic wounds that she did not know how to face, let alone heal. "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

20 " They were sitting on a small bench near the Kropotkin Gate when Svetlana mentioned the subject of suicide. Sinyavsky replied, “A suicide only thinks that he is killing himself. He is killing only his body, and the soul after that languishes, for God alone can take the soul.”3 Svetlana may have remembered Grandmother Olga’s words: “You will know your soul when it aches. "

― Rosemary Sullivan , Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva