"By the way--everyone LOVES the Ticket Out jacket, wherever we go...Thanks."
     -Jennifer Gilmore

"The authors are very pleased with the [cover] photo."
     -Michael McGandy

"Your cover design is beautiful."
     -Madelyn Larsen

On Victory, Dissent & Revitalization

"Have to tell you again after viewing the photos....[they] are so evocative and important to the story of what so many are going through... for me personally, they made me think of my grandmother's town in North Carolina, the sadness of a town just fading. And with the demise of many newspapers in this country, such documenting is even more important. The beauty of it through your lens makes it even more heartbreaking..."
     -Sarah Gaddis, writer

On Chess through the Eyes of Children

"Thanks for sending the images....this is a wonderful project."
     -Betsy Brandes (DoubleTake Magazine)

On Glasnost Moscow

"Roberta Fineberg's images have nothing derivative about them-nothing to do with flowered shawls and less to do with big fur hats...; the images translate the life of Muscovites during a society in transition, and the lives of women in particular who have a facial expression of defeat. There they are-on the bus, in the Metro on the streets (streets and corners familiar to old and new Moscow). The photographer was most successful in capturing the streets, says the native Muscovite poetess Elena Khazan. '...This returns a part of my life to me. ...And the houses-locked up tight and somehow unreliable-their dangerous smell, as poet Joseph Brodsky writes: There is nowhere further to go. Further on you cannot differentiate between golden speech and golden teeth. The alarm clock ticks on in silence. In ten minutes the house will definitely explode.' "
     Russia Through the Eyes of Americans
     by Margarita Shkliarevskaia, the Russian Bazaar, 2004
     Translated from the Russian by Elias Hantula

On Women Writers

"I like the relationship you establish between the subject and the environment as well as the frankness in your approach."
     -Jean-Claude Lemagny, curator, the National Library in Paris, France

"Through the portraits, the photographer writes with her eye, applying her sensibility, culture, and imagination to depict the faces of her subjects..."
     -Georges-Emmanuel Clancier, French poet

"It's a good portrait, with a lot of atmosphere."
     -Catherine Texier, French writer

"Many thanks for sending the photo, which I find really intriguing-the circles and squares, dark and light, feminine and androgynous contrasts. I'm usually smiling in photos, too, so that somber expression of mine is interesting for me to see!"
     -Lisa Alther, American writer

"I love the photo you sent-the composition and the face I did not perceive. It reminds me of how we recognize a beautiful book; something is discovered which was always there, but which we chose to ignore."
     -Annie Ernaux, French writer