Quotes from Olga Tokarczuk

Words are not nobilities that want their genealogical trees we traced. Words are merchants, swift and useful, now here, now there.

Standing there on the embankment, staring into the current, I realized that – in spite of all the risks involved – a thing in motion will always be better than a thing at rest; that change will always be a nobler thing than permanence; that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ash, while that which is in motion is able to last for all eternity.

Literature is built on tenderness toward any being other than ourselves. It is the basic psychological mechanism of the novel. Thanks to this miraculous tool, the most sophisticated means of human communication, our experience can travel through time, reaching those who have not yet been born, but who will one day turn to what we have written, the stories we told about ourselves and our world.

Ühel õhtul, kui tõime terrassilt sisse tühjad teetassid ja torditaldrikud, ütles Marta, et inimese kõige tähtsam ülesanne on päästa seda, mis on lagunemas, aga mitte uute asjade loomine.

In the beginning, long ago, he fled his country, one of those bland, flat communist lands, and as a young immigrant got hired to work on a whaling ship. At that time, he had only a few English words under his belt, intermittent pinpoints between "yes" and "no," just exactly enough to answer the simple grunts the guys on the ship would exchange among themselves.

In a pulpit Man places himself above other Creatures and grants himself the right to their life and death.

Inimene muutub, kasvab vanadest oludest välja nagu laps rõivaist. Aeg voolab ja muudab kõike. On suuri ja väikesi sõdu, need suured muudavad maailma, väikesed inimest.

Sometimes I feel as if we're living inside a tomb, a large, spacious one for lots of people. I looked at the world wreathed in gray Murk, cold and nasty. The prison is not outside, but inside each of us. Perhaps we simply don't know how to live without it.

Izydor couldn't care less about either the Party or going to church. Now he needed time for thinking, remembering Ruta, for reading, for learning German, for writing letters, collecting stamps, staring at his skylight, and gradually, idly sensing the order of the universe.

One can put up with the petty things that hardly cause any discomfort, but not with senseless, ubiquitous cruelty. It's perfectly simple—if other people are happy, we're happy too. The simplest equation in the world.

Other people's life stories are not a topic for debate. One should hear them out, and reciprocate in the same coin.

Sometimes I can't sleep because I miss you all so much. And sometimes I don't think about you at all.

At this time of year the world is at its most detestable.

She had such a deep tan that she looked as if she'd just been removed from the barbecue.

Man harnesses his suffering to time. He suffers as a result of the past and extends his suffering into the future. In this way he creates despair.

And he who has once seen the world's borders will suffer his imprisonment most painfully of all.

It is at Dusk that the most interesting things occur, for that is when simple differences fade away. I could live in everlasting Dusk.

And that the world is a great big net, it is a whole, where no single thing exists separately; every scrap of the world, every last tiny piece, is bound up with the rest by a complex Cosmos of correspondences, hard for the ordinary mind to penetrate. That is how it works. Like a Japanese car.

people like her, those who wield a pen, can be dangerous. At once a suspicion of fakery springs to mind—that such a Person is not him- or herself, but

Dressing the dead man was like a form of caress. I doubt he ever experienced such tenderness in life.

Anger makes the mind clear and incisive, able to see more. It sweeps up the other emotions and takes control of the body. Without a doubt Anger is the source of all wisdom, for Anger has the power to exceed any limits.

We believe we are free, and that God will forgive us. Personally I think otherwise. Finally, transformed into tiny quivering photons, each of our deeds will set off into Outer Space, where the planets will keep watching it like a film until the end of the world.

leven, het is een vreemd leven als men 's ochtends terugkeert naar wat men 's avonds heeft achtergelaten

The flight attendants, beautiful as angels, check to make sure we're fit to travel, and then, with a benevolent motion of the hand, permit us to plunge on into the soft, carpet-lined curves of the tunnel that will lead us aboard our plane and onto a chilly aerial road to new worlds. That smile of theirs hold - or so it strikes us - a kind of promise that perhaps we will be born anew now, this time in the right time and the right place.