Svetlana Alexievich Quotes Quotes

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 take a very long time to write my books - from five to ten years.
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.
I want to live at home. You can only write at home.
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.
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.
I will never write fiction.
I write my books at moments of shock. I meet people in extremis and their stories are highly emotionally charged.
I'm interested in little people. 'The little, great people' is how I would put it, because suffering expands people.
I'm interested in love and in death. Everything evolves from these things.
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.
I'm not a public person.
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.
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.
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.
It's very important to listen when someone is speaking up. I always keep my ear to the ground.
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.
I've known since I was five that I wanted to be a writer.
Journalists do not write about human feelings.
Love is what brings us into this world.
«first‹previous12345next›last»
Total Records : 100

Related Books

Author Profile

Votes :
Rating :
AuthorName
Svetlana Alexievich
Profession
Journalist
BirthDate
31 May, 1948
View Profile

Share to your friends..

Related Author

Andrew Mwenda Svetlana Alexievich Tawakkol Karman
view more

Popular Topics

Attitude Death Inspirational Life Love Motivational Nature Positive