“When everyone kept the island’s secret, it was a hard stone on which [Yugoslavia] rested. When people began to talk, the country started to fall apart.”

— Božidar Jezernik (Slovenian ethnologist)

“Some inmates…managed to keep their own shoes. However, they quickly proved useless in contact with the sharp limestone of the island's soil, by 'falling apart almost momentarily.' … The wounds inflicted by the stone penetrating the skin on the inmates' 'tender' feet, the first stone-inflicted wounds on the human flesh”

— Milica Prokić (Serbian environmental historian)