Svetlana Alexievich

“I used to live in a village, and I always loved listening to old people. Unfortunately, it was always women who were talking, because after the war, very few men were around. I spent my entire life living in the village. The village is always talking about itself; people are talking to each other as the village makes sense of itself.”

“I don't think we should be deceived that art is such a moral thing.”

“All of history misses out on the history of the soul. Human passions are so often not included in history.”

“We were romantics in the 1990s and thought that communism was dead. But 10 years passed, and Putin came, and it became obvious that the process is reversible; that communism will, to varying degrees, return again and again.”

“My writing is not just all facts and voices. I strive to create a text that works as a sign, pointing out undercurrents that lie beneath the facts.”

“Flaubert called himself a human pen; I would say that I am a human ear. When I walk down the street and catch words, phrases, and exclamations, I always think - how many novels disappear without a trace! Disappear into darkness.”

“There are horrible periods in which entire nations sink into the plague of darkness and hatred.”

“I collect the everyday life of feelings, thoughts, and words. I collect the life of my time.”

“Pretty soon, I'll be decomposing into phosphorous, calcium, and so on. Who else will you find to tell you the truth? All that's left are the archives. Pieces of paper. And the truth is... I worked at an archive myself, I can tell you first hand: paper lies even more than people do.”

“No book about Soviet sacrifice was as strong as the women's stories I heard as a child.”

“Love is what brings us into this world.”

“I take a very long time to write my books - from five to ten years.”

“We, people of socialism, are not like others. We have our peculiar ideas about heroes and martyrs.”

“It's very important to listen when someone is speaking up. I always keep my ear to the ground.”

“I have three homes: my Belarusian land, the homeland of my father, where I have lived my whole life; Ukraine, the homeland of my mother, where I was born; and Russia's great culture, without which I cannot imagine myself. All are very dear to me.”

“The subjects I wanted to write about - the mystery of the human soul, evil - didn't interest newspapers, and news reporting bored me.”

“Nobody thought the Soviet Union would collapse; it was a shock for everyone.”

“Being in the public eye is easy for me because I come from a family of four generations of teachers, so I'm used to being around books and discussions. But to write, I very much need to be alone.”

“Women tell things in more interesting ways. They live with more feeling. They observe themselves and their lives. Men are more impressed with action. For them, the sequence of events is more important.”

“Lukashenko is very much like Trump, because democracy and Trump are incompatible things.”