“For 11 years, I was mayor of Tirana, our capital. We faced many challe...” — Edi Rama Quote

For 11 years, I was mayor of Tirana, our capital. We faced many challenges. Art was part of the answer, and my name, in the very beginning, was linked with two things: demolition of illegal constructions in order to get public space back, and use of colors in order to revive the hope that had been lost in my city.

Compromise in colors is grey.

I still paint. I love the joy that color can give to our lives and to our communities. I try to bring something of the artist in me to my politics.

I entered politics from a completely different background from other people in this field, and that has helped me to see and deal with things differently.

You must have hope as long as you are still alive.

Men and women are not limited by the place of their birth, not by color of their skin, but by the size of their hope.

I like this part of the story best,’ she says. ‘Me too,’ says Tom. ‘Oh, me too.’ And oh God, thinks Claudia, may it have a happy ending. Please may it have a happy ending.

...the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured- disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui- in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off.