Svetlana Alexievich Quotes

Belarusian - Journalist Born: May 31, 1948 I have always grappled with the fact that the truth cannot be packaged into one soul or one mind alone. It is something fragmented: there is so much to it; the truth is varied and scattered across the world.

 Svetlana Alexievich 

Women tell things in more interesting ways. They live with more feeling. They observe themselves and their lives. Men are more impressed with action. For them, the sequence of events is more important.  Svetlana Alexievich 

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

All of history misses out on the history of the soul. Human passions are so often not included in history.  Svetlana Alexievich 

Freedom is not an instantaneous holiday, as we once dreamed. It is a road. A long road. We know this now.  Svetlana Alexievich

 The purpose of art is to accumulate the human within the human being. Svetlana Alexievich

 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. Svetlana Alexievich

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

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

 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. Svetlana Alexievich

 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.  Svetlana Alexievich

 I always aim to understand how much humanity is contained in each human being and how I can protect this humanity in a person. Svetlana Alexievich 

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.  Svetlana Alexievich

 I grew up in a village after the war, and in the village, there were almost only women. Svetlana Alexievich

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

 I have three homes: my Belarusian land, the homeland of my father, where I have lived my whole life; Ukraine, the homeland of my mother, where I was born; and Russia's great culture, without which I cannot imagine myself. All are very dear to me. Svetlana Alexievich 

Many times, I have been shocked and frightened by human beings. I have experienced delight and revulsion. I have sometimes wanted to forget what I heard, to return to a time when I lived in ignorance. More than once, however, I have seen the sublime in people and wanted to cry. Svetlana Alexievich 

I have collected the history of 'domestic,' 'indoor' socialism, bit by bit. The history of how it played out in the human soul. I am drawn to that small space called a human being... a single individual. In reality, that is where everything happens. Svetlana Alexievich

 We thought we'd leave communism behind, and everything would turn out fine. But it turns out you can't leave this and become free, because these people don't understand what freedom is. Svetlana Alexievich

 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. Svetlana Alexievich 

I couldn't get published for three years. Then the times changed: glasnost, perestroika. So, for three years, I wasn't allowed to publish 'The Unwomanly Face of War,' but then it changed. Svetlana Alexievich 

When people talk, it matters how they place words next to each other.  Svetlana Alexievich

 I don't hate. I love the Russian people. I love the Belarusan people... I love Ukraine very much. Svetlana Alexievich 

A totalitarian power is mainly busy in keeping itself alive. Svetlana Alexievich

 I've been searching for a genre that would be most adequate to my vision of the world to convey how my ear hears and my eyes see life. I tried this and that, and finally, I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves. But I don't just record a dry history of events and facts; I'm writing a history of human feelings. Svetlana Alexievich 

I love the good Russian world, the humanitarian Russian world, but I do not love the Russian world of Beria, Stalin, and Shoigu. Svetlana Alexievich 

I take a very long time to write my books - from five to ten years. Svetlana Alexievich

Real people speak in my books about the main events of the age, such as the war, the Chernobyl disaster, and the downfall of a great empire.  Svetlana Alexievich

 Hatred will always give birth to more and more hate, and love has the power to demolish the borders between us.  Svetlana Alexievich 

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

'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. Svetlana Alexievich 

I'm interested in the history of the soul: the everyday life of the soul, the things that the big picture of history usually omits - or disdains. Svetlana Alexievich

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

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

 Ten to 15 of my childhood friends from Minsk died of cancer. Chernobyl kills. Svetlana Alexievich

 I grew up in the countryside. Svetlana Alexievich 

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. Svetlana Alexievich

 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. Svetlana Alexievich

 Love is what brings us into this world.  Svetlana Alexievich 

Art is always kind of snooping and listening in.  Svetlana Alexievich

 I do not remember any questions in my childhood other than questions about death and about loss, and it was clear that the books that filled the house were not as interesting as the conversations outside. Svetlana Alexievich 

Stalin's machine can be started up again at only a moment's notice: the same informers, the same denunciations, the same tortures. The same universal, all-devouring terror.  Svetlana Alexievich

 I'm interested in little people. 'The little, great people' is how I would put it, because suffering expands people. Svetlana Alexievich 

Nobody thought the Soviet Union would collapse; it was a shock for everyone. Svetlana Alexievich

 From the point of view of art, the butcher and the victim are equal as people. You need to see the people. Svetlana Alexievich 

There are many oral historians in America, but my books are made using the rules of novel writing. I have a beginning, a plot, characters.  Svetlana Alexievich

 I've known since I was five that I wanted to be a writer.  Svetlana Alexievich 

I am a writer who happens to use some tools of journalism.  Svetlana Alexievich 

Putin is not a politician. Putin is a KGB agent. And whatever he does is provocations, which KGB is usually involved in.  Svetlana Alexievich

 In the West, people demonize Putin. They do not understand that there is a collective Putin, consisting of some millions of people who do not want to be humiliated by the West. There is a little piece of Putin in everyone.  Svetlana Alexievich

 I collect the everyday life of feelings, thoughts, and words. I collect the life of my time. Svetlana Alexievich

 The subjects I wanted to write about - the mystery of the human soul, evil - didn't interest newspapers, and news reporting bored me. Share this Quote Svetlana Alexievich For money, I can buy one thing: I buy freedom. Svetlana Alexievich 

My wish is to humanize history. Share this Quote Svetlana Alexievich It's very important to listen when someone is speaking up. I always keep my ear to the ground.  Svetlana Alexievich

We are all prisoners of the ideas of the times we live in.  Svetlana Alexievich 

I write my books at moments of shock. I meet people in extremis and their stories are highly emotionally charged. Share this Quote Svetlana Alexievich Hatred, I think, is an organism that penetrates our skin in a mythic fashion and does not leave.  Svetlana Alexievich

 I name the genre that I write in as 'novel of voices.' Svetlana Alexievich