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" I'm interested in love and in death. Everything evolves from these things. "

Svetlana Alexievich

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" 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. "

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" Women are the most denigrated social group in the Soviet Union. The idea of women's emancipation is only a slogan in - but also, I should say, in many places outside - the Soviet Union. But especially in the militaristic Soviet society, people only thought of life in terms of struggle and the workers' toil. "

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" For money, I can buy one thing: I buy freedom. "

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" I have always grappled with the fact that the truth cannot be packaged into one soul or one mind alone. It is something fragmented: there is so much to it; the truth is varied and scattered across the world. "

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" Real people speak in my books about the main events of the age, such as the war, the Chernobyl disaster, and the downfall of a great empire. "

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" I'm interested in little people. 'The little, great people' is how I would put it, because suffering expands people. "

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" I love the good Russian world, the humanitarian Russian world, but I do not love the Russian world of Beria, Stalin, and Shoigu. "

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" Every one of his characters has their own idea, their own thing they want to express. Dostoevsky just lets them do it. "

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" Reality has always attracted me like a magnet; it tortured and hypnotized me. I wanted to capture it on paper. "

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" America is a remarkable country, but I have a feeling that it's a different country after 9/11. "

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

Svetlana Alexievich

" I believe that in the 21st century, we should arm ourselves with ideas. "

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" When I was a child, women spoke to me of how all they had was their memories, how their husbands went to war and never came back, so many tragedies. That chorus of voices filled my consciousness. It was part of life itself. "

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" All our lives, we fight for certain ideals, and they get diluted, and then we have to fight for them again. "

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" Stalin's machine can be started up again at only a moment's notice: the same informers, the same denunciations, the same tortures. The same universal, all-devouring terror. "

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" I name the genre that I write in as 'novel of voices.' "

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" I always aim to understand how much humanity is contained in each human being and how I can protect this humanity in a person. "

Svetlana Alexievich

" I have collected the history of 'domestic,' 'indoor' socialism, bit by bit. The history of how it played out in the human soul. I am drawn to that small space called a human being... a single individual. In reality, that is where everything happens. "

Svetlana Alexievich

" What you have to remember about Belarus is that it's a small state - it has a population of less than 10m people - and like many small states, it has to be very careful about its relationships. "

Svetlana Alexievich

" I do not remember any questions in my childhood other than questions about death and about loss, and it was clear that the books that filled the house were not as interesting as the conversations outside. "

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. "

Svetlana Alexievich

" I was always meant to study the humanities; I was no good at math or sciences. When it came time for me to work, it was Soviet times, and journalism wasn't that free or interesting of a space. There was a lot of censorship; it was difficult. "

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" Nothing, not even human life, is more precious to us than our myths about ourselves. "

Svetlana Alexievich

" I want to live at home. You can only write at home. "

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" When people talk, it matters how they place words next to each other. "

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" My Ukrainian grandmother would tell amazing stories. She lost her father, and as children, we would always listen to her stories. "

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" I love how humans talk. "

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" People always speak beautifully when they are in love or close to death. "

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" I don't remember men in our village after World War II: during the war, one out of four Belarusians perished, either fighting at the front or with the partisans. After the war, we children lived in a world of women. What I remember most is that women talked about love, not death. "

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" Putin has mobilized and gathered the desires of millions upon millions of people who have been lied to, cheated, who lost out in the new order of things - and in each of these people is a bit of Putin. They have come together to make the image we know as Putin. Putin himself is just the tip of an iceberg. "

Svetlana Alexievich