255 Quotes by Svetlana Alexievich

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

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

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.

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.

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.

There is this tradition, stretching back to Tacitus and Plutarch, that history belongs to the heroes, the emperors. But I grew up among simple people, and their stories just shattered me. It was painful that no one but me was listening to them.

I love to sit on my own and think, not to be photographed all the time.

I'm not a public person.

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.