255 Quotes by Svetlana Alexievich

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.

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.

I don't think we should be deceived that art is such a moral thing.

I can't rid myself of the feeling that war is a product of the male nature.

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.

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

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.

In the post-Soviet era, instead of freedom, various stripes of autocratic-totalitarianism have flourished: Russian, Belarusian, Kazakh... We are finding our way out from under the debris of the 'Red Empire' slowly and tentatively.

I love how humans talk.