Quotes from Olga Tokarczuk

As I gazed at the black-and-white landscape of the Plateau, I realized that sorrow is an important word for defining the world. It lies at the foundations of everything, it is the fifth element, the quintessence.

zaczynam wychodzi? z momentu "teraz" i stawa? ju? jedn? nog? w momencie "potem".

It's a tendency to be sybaritic, to live in a state of mild semiconsciousness, to fritter your life away on petty pleasures, to dislike effort and be devoid of any penchant for competition. Long mornings, unopened letters, things put off for later, abandoned projects. A dislike of any authority and a refusal to submit to it, going your own way in a taciturn, idle manner. You could say such people are of no use at all.

all you have to do to become invisible is be a woman of a certain age, without any outstanding features: it is automatic. Not only invisible to men, but also women, who no longer treat her as competition. It is a new and surprising sensation, how people's eyes just sort of float right over her face. They look straight through her, no doubt looking past her at ads and landscapes and schedules.

We speak of grown-ups being "tall," but a child is "long.

Dizzy," I said, "it's Animals taking revenge on people." Dizzy always believes me, but this time he wasn't listening.

If you think you are capable of destruction, think how you could build.

It's hard work talking to some people, most often males.

his letters came in light blue envelopes with stamps the color of whole-wheat bread.

Don't they have men child psychologists in this city? Or have women established some kind of monopoly on children?

D. zaczyna? cokolwiek widzie?, gdy siada? przed ekranem swojego komputera. Mia? wtedy przed sob? porz?dek i niesko?czon? harmoni?, prostot? dróg, które prowadz? do celu, jasno?? wyborów, ogromny potencja? my?li. Zaraz za tym do?wiadcza? spokoju, jaki bierze si? ze ?wiadomo?ci bycia wolnym. W pewnych granicach. Ale czy mo?na mówi? o jakichkolwiek granicach, kiedy tworzy si? ?wiaty?

God gave animals a lower rank, in the service of man.

I find this division of people into three groups - skiers, allergy sufferers and drivers - very convincing. It is a good, straightforward typology. Skiers and hedonists. They are carried down the slopes. Whereas drivers prefer to take date in their hands, although their spines often suffer as a result; we all know life is hard. Whereas the allergy sufferers are always at war.

They really were the people from the well - they'd fallen into it long ago and had now arranged their lives at the bottom of it, thinking the well was the entire world.

In fact, no real heresy could ever come about in Polish. By its nature, the Polish language is obedient to every orthodoxy.

This question was so unexpected that I instantly let myself be carried away by memories. They began to sail past my eyes, and typically for memories, everything in them seemed better, finer, and happier than in reality. It's strange, but we didn't say a word.

He also gave her the name of his illness, but in Polish, so she had no idea what it was, because she just didn't know the Polish name for it. "Do you remember our promise?" he wrote.

A man's free to do what he wants with his life, until he falls foul of the banks," Dizzy sermonized with contagious certainty.

Rozkosz nie jest przyjemno?ci?… - zaczyna?a sennie jego ?ona, gdy D. szuka? na jej ciele klawisza ENTER.

We were interrogated as if we had murdered the Commandant with our own hands. Luckily

Every body part deserves to be remembered. Every human body deserves to last. It is an outrage that it's so fragile, so delicate. It is an outrage that it's permitted to disintegrate underground, or given the mercy of flames, burned like trash.

For people my age, the places that they truly loved and to which they once belonged are no longer there.

By my final years at primary school I had realised that literature was more than just an ordinary pleasure. I could tell that reading opened entirely different worlds before me...

The world has dropped its petals.