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" 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. "

Svetlana Alexievich

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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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" I was born in a big city - Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine - but when I was a child, my father moved us back to his homeland in Minsk. "

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" To be in conflict with the authorities is one thing. We Russian writers have got used to that. But to be in conflict with your own people - that is truly terrible. "

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" In apartments and cottages, on the street and in the train... I listen... More and more, I turn into one large ear, always turning to another person. "

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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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" Why do I write? I have been called a writer of catastrophes, but that isn't true. I am always looking for words of love. Hate will not save us. Only love. "

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" 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. "

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" We thought we'd leave communism behind, and everything would turn out fine. But it turns out you can't leave this and become free, because these people don't understand what freedom is. "

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" I don't love great ideas. I love the little human being. "

Svetlana Alexievich

" I am a writer who happens to use some tools of journalism. "

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" I've been searching for a genre that would be most adequate to my vision of the world to convey how my ear hears and my eyes see life. I tried this and that, and finally, I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves. But I don't just record a dry history of events and facts; I'm writing a history of human feelings. "

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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. "

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

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" 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 grew up in the countryside. "

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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. "

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. "

Svetlana Alexievich

" What I'm concerned with is what I would call the missing history - the invisible imprint of our stay on Earth and in time. "

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

Svetlana Alexievich

" I will never write fiction. "

Svetlana Alexievich

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

Svetlana Alexievich

" 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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" 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. "

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" My father was an important person, the director of the school. He could talk to anybody - simple or educated. He liked chess, fishing, and beautiful women. "

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" I've known since I was five that I wanted to be a writer. "

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" I see the world as voices, as colors, as it were. From book to book, I change, the subjects change, but the narrative thread remains the same. "

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" 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

" I don't want to be like other authors and say that there are only a few story lines in literature. A story is like a human face. We have as many stories as human faces. You might have similar facial features, but they're all a little different. "

Svetlana Alexievich