Svetlana Alexievich

I'm not a public person.

— Svetlana Alexievich

I grew up in the countryside.

— Svetlana Alexievich

I love how humans talk.

— Svetlana Alexievich

My wish is to humanize history.

— Svetlana Alexievich

Love is what brings us into this world.

— Svetlana Alexievich

I will never write fiction.

— Svetlana Alexievich

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

— Svetlana Alexievich

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

— Svetlana Alexievich

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

— Svetlana Alexievich

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

— 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

I love to sit on my own and think, not to be photographed all the time.

— Svetlana Alexievich

I believe that in the 21st century, we should arm ourselves with ideas.

— Svetlana Alexievich

“As my physics teacher always said, “My dear students! Just remember that money solves all problems, even differential equations.”

— Svetlana Alexievich

Belarus is a closed, authoritarian system, and the theme of Chernobyl is also a closed topic.

— Svetlana Alexievich

Humans have occupied a position in nature that they should not. It is impossible for humans to conquer nature.

— Svetlana Alexievich

I love the good Russian world, the humanitarian Russian world, but I do not love the Russian world of Beria, Stalin, and…

— 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

“Show me a fantasy novel about Chernobyl--there isn't one! Because reality is more fantastic.”

— Svetlana Alexievich

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

— Svetlana Alexievich

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

— Svetlana Alexievich

Many times, I have been shocked and frightened by human beings. I have experienced delight and revulsion. I have sometimes wanted to…

— Svetlana Alexievich

What you have to remember about Belarus is that it's a small state - it has a population of less than 10m…

— 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…

— Svetlana Alexievich

“How can we preserve our planet on which little girls are supposed to sleep in their beds, and not lie dead on…

— Svetlana Alexievich

I do not remember any questions in my childhood other than questions about death and about loss, and it was clear that…

— Svetlana Alexievich

We were romantics in the 1990s and thought that communism was dead. But 10 years passed, and Putin came, and it became…

— Svetlana Alexievich

I have collected the history of 'domestic,' 'indoor' socialism, bit by bit. The history of how it played out in the human…

— Svetlana Alexievich

Flaubert called himself a human pen; I would say that I am a human ear. When I walk down the street and…

— Svetlana Alexievich

“The Germans rolled back, and a wounded lieutenant, the artillerist Kostia Khudov, was left in no-man’s-land. The orderlies who tried to bring…

— Svetlana Alexievich

“Why didn't we put Stalin on trial? I'll tell you why...In order to condemn Stalin, you'd have to condemn your friends and…

— Svetlana Alexievich

“Don’t call these the “wonders of Soviet heroism" when you write about it. Those wonders really did exist. But first there had…

— Svetlana Alexievich

“Mientras duró la guerra, yo no reflexionaba, pero después comencé a pensar. A rebobinar... Todo aquello se repetía una y otra vez...…

— Svetlana Alexievich

“Reality has always attracted me like a magnet, tortured and hypnotized me, and I wanted to capture it on paper. So I…

— Svetlana Alexievich

“We were eight children in our family, the first four were all girls, I was the oldest. Papa once came home from…

— Svetlana Alexievich

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

— Svetlana Alexievich

We need a philosophy for humans and nature to live together.

— Svetlana Alexievich

What is life about? Two things: love and death.

— Svetlana Alexievich

I'm interested in love and in death. Everything evolves from these things.

— Svetlana Alexievich