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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Art is always kind of snooping and listening in.

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.

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

Love is what brings us into this world.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I grew up in the countryside.