Quotes from Olga Tokarczuk

The further north you go, the more people concentrate on themselves, and in some sort of northern madness (no doubt due to the lack of sun) they ascribe to themselves too much. They make themselves responsible for their actions.

There's also a stony precipice nearby, but anyone who thinks it's a natural feature would be mistaken, for it's the remains of an old quarry, which used to take bites out of the Plateau and would surely have consumed the whole thing eventually in the avid mouths of its diggers. They say there are plans to start it up again, at which point we shall vanish from the face of the Earth, devoured by Machines.

The Messiah has to fall as low as possible, otherwise he isn't the Messiah.

And what a stroke of luck that such a book had fallen into the hands of such a person in such a place.

To be impatient means never really living, being always in the future, in what will happen, but which is after all not yet here. Do not impatient people resemble spirits who are never here in this place, and now, in this very moment, but rather sticking their heads out of life like those wanderers who supposedly, when they found themselves at the end of the world, just looked onward, beyond the horizon? What did they see there? What is it that an impatient person hopes to glimpse?

A mind that seemed to be aware of everything, even things it didn't really understand, but that moved fast—a quick, intelligent electric impulse without limits, linking everything with everything, convinced that all of it together must mean something, even if we couldn't yet know what.

One has to tell people what to think. There's no alternative. Otherwise someone else will do it.

Florentynka wcale nie uwa?a?a si? za wariatk?. Ksi??yc prze?ladowa? j?, jak ka?dy normalny prze?ladowca. Ale której? nocy wydarzy?o si? co? dziwnego.

I often crossed it inadvertently when out that way on my daily rounds. But I also liked to cross it on purpose, deliberately stepping to and fro. A dozen times, or several dozen times. I'd amuse myself like that for half an hour—playing the game of crossing the border. It gave me pleasure, because I could remember the time when it wasn't possible. I love crossing borders.

If human beings had only known how to truly preserve their knowledge of the world, if they had just engraved it into rock, into crystals, into diamond and in so doing, passed it on to their descendants, then perhaps the world would now look altogether otherwise. For what are we to do with such a brittle stuff as paper? What can come of writing books?

In the last few years she has realized that all you have to do to become invisible is be a woman of a certain age, without any outstanding features: it's automatic.

Whenever I set off on any sort of journey I fall off the radar. No one knows where I am. At the point I departed from? Or at the point I'm headed to? Can there be an in-between?

What a joy it is in life when you happen to have a clean, warm kitchen.

Ksi??yc to tylko maska s?o?ca. Wk?ada j?, kiedy wychodzi noc? pilnowa? ?wiata. Ksi??yc ma krótk? pami??, nie pami?ta, co by?o miesi?c temu

I'd started to put on my boots, but that terrible gray morning alarmed me. 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.

Contuition," repeated the professor, his irritation painstakingly concealed, "is, as I said, a variety of insight that spontaneously reveals the presence of some larger-than-human strength, some unity above heterogeneity.

Asher has learned that people have a powerful need to feel superior to others. It doesn't matter who they are – they have to find someone who's beneath them.

the vastness of these contents cannot be traversed from word to word- you have to step in between the words, into the unfathomable abysses between ideas. With every step we'll slip and fall.

Their clothes have become transparent, so she watches them wed entropy. Our bodies are poor, dirty, grist—without exception—for the mill.

Being healthy is an insecure state and does not bode well. It's better to be ill in a quiet way, then at least we know what we're going to die of.

Bez wiary jeste?my jak zwierz?ta. Jak bestie (...) Tylko chrze?cija?stwo chroni nas przed rzuceniem si? sobie do garde?. (...) Cz?owiek jest istot? z gruntu z?? i nieobyczajn?. Jest zbudowany z instynktów, amoralny z natury. Chrze?cija?stwo uczyni?o nas lud?mi i gdy tylko znikn? jego normy, zostaniemy z niczym, b?dzie rz?dzi? czysty nihilizm.

This is a land of neurotic egotists, each of whom, as soon as he finds himself among others, starts to instruct, criticize, offend, and show off his undoubted superiority.

Imagining is a bridge reconciling matter and spirit. Especially when it is done intensely and often. Then the image turns into a drop of matter, and joins the currents of life.

It did take Odysseus twenty years." "That doesn't matter," the professor replied merrily. "In today's day and age you could do it in two weeks.