213 Quotes by Olga Tokarczuk


  • Author Olga Tokarczuk
  • Quote

    It's clear that the largest things are contained in the smallest. There can be no doubt about it. At this very moment, as I write, there's a planetary configuration on this table, the entire Cosmos if you like: a thermometer, a coin, an aluminum spoon and a porcelain cup. A key, a mobile phone, a piece of paper and pen. And one of my grey hairs, whose atoms preserve the memory of the origins of life, of the cosmic Catastrophe that gave the world its beginning.

  • Tags
  • Share

  • Author Olga Tokarczuk
  • Quote

    Gradually I felt flooded by a powerful sense of communion with the people passing by. Each man was my brother and each woman my sister. We were so very much alike. So fragile, impermanent, and easily destroyed. We trustingly went to and fro beneath the sky, which had nothing good in store for us.

  • Tags
  • Share

  • Author Olga Tokarczuk
  • Quote

    To my mind, Death should be followed by the annihilation of matter. That would be the best solution for the body. Like this, annihilated bodies would go straight back into the black holes whence they came. The Souls would travel at the speed of light into the light. If such a thing as the Soul exists.

  • Tags
  • Share


  • Author Olga Tokarczuk
  • Quote

    Nie, nie ludzie w naszym kraju nie mają umiejętności zrzeszania się i tworzenia wspólnoty, nawet pod sztandarem prawdziwka. To kraj neurotycznych indywidualistów, z których każdy, gdy tylko znajdzie się wśród innych, zaczyna ich pouczać, krytykować, obrażać i okazywać im swoją niewątpliwą wyższość.

  • Tags
  • Share

  • Author Olga Tokarczuk
  • Quote

    But why should we have to be useful and for what reason? Who divided the world into useless and useful, and by what right? Does a thistle have no right to life, or a Mouse that eats the green in a warehouse? What about Bees and Drones, weeds and roses? Whose intellect can have had the audacity to judge who is better, and who worse?

  • Tags
  • Share

  • Author Olga Tokarczuk
  • Quote

    People think they live more intensely than animals, than plants, and especially than things. Animals sense that they live more intensely than plants and things. Plants dream that they live more intensely than things. But things last, and this lasting is more alive than anything else.

  • Tags
  • Share