Quotes from Olga Tokarczuk

sometimes it happens that the souls of parents and children are fundamentally hostile to one another, and they meet in life in order to remedy this hostility.

As long as people don't find out how awful and abominable man can be to fellow man, their innocence will be left intact.

Clearly I did not inherit whatever gene it is that makes it so that when you linger in a place you start to put down roots.

mitologi?, jako zbiór pouczaj?cych opowie?ci, które pomagaj? ?y?

I love the idea of reading books as a brotherly, sisterly moral obligation to one's people.

I don't collect anything.

În ianuarie, în zilele de miercuri, la ?apte diminea?a, se vede c? lumea nu a fost creat? pentru om ?i cu siguran?? nu pentru confortul ?i pl?cerea lui.

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How will he get by in the desert without bowls and plates, without coal stoves, without carpets to lie down on with the little ones? Without his toilet, without the view from the window onto the square and the fountains with their crystal-clear water.

no great significance that are too highly valued. It is in the feet that all knowledge of Mankind lies hidden; the body sends them a weighty sense of who we really are and how we relate to the earth. It's in the touch of the earth, at its point of contact with the body that the whole mystery is located—the fact that we're built of elements of matter, while also being alien to it, separated from it. The feet—those are our plugs into the socket.

His only regret is that the little camera can't take a picture of itself.

Czasami, gdy Cz?owiek do?wiadcza Gniewu, wszystko wydaje si? oczywiste i proste. Gniew zaprowadza porz?dek, pokazuje ?wiat w oczywistym skrócie, w Gniewie powraca te? dar Jasno?ci Widzenia, o który trudno w innych stanach.

I think we all feel great ambivalence at the sight of our own Horoscope. On the one hand we're proud to see that the sky is imprinted on our individual life, like a postmark with a date stamped on a letter – this makes it distinct, one of a kind. But at the same time it's a form of imprisonment in space, like a tattooed prison number. There's no escaping it. I cannot be someone other than I am. How awful.

Iacchus, Iacchus,

The state ceases to impose the shackles of daily oppression, but helps people realize their hopes and dreams. And Man is not just a cog in the system, not just a playing role, but a free Creature.

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.

he sees immortal blackberry bushes, darkened by the sun, clinging to the rocks with their long shoots.

It's a very cowardly attitude to mock or belittle everything, never be committed to anything, not feel tied to anything. Like an impotent man who can't experience pleasure himself, but will do all he can to ruin it for others.

There's a couple—she is nestled up into his chest, eyes closed, like she's trying to top off an interrupted night's sleep.

As I stood there, gazing at the pulpits, I could turn around at any moment to take gentle hold of the sharp, jagged line of the horizon as if it were a strand of hair. To look beyond it.

A prisão não está no exterior e, sim, no interior de cada um de nós. É possível que não saibamos viver sem ela.

the island represents our earliest, most primal state prior to socialization, when the ego has already individualized enough to attain a certain level of self-awareness, but without yet having entered into complete, fulfilling relationships with its surroundings

Opowie?? ma swoj? bezw?adno??, nad któr? nie mo?na nigdy do ko?ca zapanowa?. Domaga si? takich jak ja — niepewnych siebie, niezdecydowanych, ?atwych do wywiedzenia w pole. Naiwnych.

The world is quite a perilous pilgrimage for those who sigh after eternity,