255 Quotes by 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.

For me, people are like the black boxes found in the debris of airplane crashes.

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.

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

I love the lone human voice. It is my greatest love and passion.

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.

You might say that my work is just simply lying on the ground, and I go and I gather it, and I pick it up, and I put it together.

'Women's' war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. There are no heroes and incredible feats; there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things.

A man without a memory is only capable of doing evil, nothing else but evil.