255 Quotes by Svetlana Alexievich

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.

I want to live at home. You can only write at home.

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

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

People always speak beautifully when they are in love or close to death.

I grew up in the countryside.

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

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.

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.