Quotes from Olga Tokarczuk

Zobacz – powiedzia? do swojej kobiety, która przysiad?a na por?czy krzes?a z palcami u?o?onymi w lecznicze mudry – oto jest Nic, które zawiera niesko?czon? liczb? wymiarów wszystkiego.

This is how she understands it: life on this planet gets developed by some powerful force contained in every atom of organic matter. It's a force there is no physical evidence of, for the time being- you can't catch it on even the most precise microscopic images, nor in photographs of the atomic spectrum.

But I know that writing on bags is something people do only out of anxiety and uncertainty. Neither defeat nor the greatest success is conducive to writing.

Imagining is essentially creative; it is a bridge reconciling matter and spirit.

God, God . . . He's just a good accountant with an eye on the debit as well as the credit column. There has to be a balance. One life is wasted, another is born . . .

Reality has grown old and gone senile; after all, it is definitely subject to the same laws as every living organism—it ages. Just like the cells of the body, its tiniest components, the senses, succumb to apoptosis. Apoptosis is natural death, brought about by the tiredness and exhaustion of matter. In Greek this word means "the dropping of petals." The world has dropped its petals.

When you live in a place and a time in which certain laws are in effect, then you must observe those laws, but never forgetting that they are only partial systems, never absolute. For the truth is something else, and if a person is not prepared to come to know it, then it may seem frightening and terrible, and that person may curse the day he learned of it. But I do believe that everyone can tell what kind of person he truly is. It is just that deep down, he doesn't want to find out.

Within two years they'd realized that Sweden was too close, that the Baltic Sea brought in certain fluids, nostalgias, miasmas, a kind of unpleasant air.

Knowledge that is grown only on the outside changes nothing inside a man, or merely changes him on the surface, as one garment is changed for another. But he who learns by taking things inside himself undergoes constant transformation, because he incorporates what he learns into his being.

I pass billboards that announce in black and white, in English, 'Jesus loves even you'. I feel uplifted by the unexpected encouragement; I'm only slightly alarmed by the 'even'. (page 336)

O?wiecenie zaczyna si? wtedy, gdy cz?owiek traci wiar? w dobro i porz?dek ?wiata. O?wiecenie jest wyrazem nieufno?ci.

Kto czyta, ?eby tylko zrozumie?, dopuszcza si? blasfemii. Czyta si?, ?eby prze?ywa? - to g??bszy, bardziej ca?o?ciowy rodzaj rozumienia.

Gdy przepisujemy i cytujemy, budujemy gmach wiedzy i rozmna?amy j? jak moje warzywa czy jab?onki. Przepisywanie jest jak szczepienie drzewa; cytowanie – jak wysiewanie nasion.

There's no hiding from this pain, there are no pills or injections for it. It must hurt, just as a river must flow and fire must burn. It spitefully reminds me that I consist of physical particles, which are slipping away by the second.

On the other hand, maybe God was taking away my children so as to bring me closer to Jacob.

No, no, people in our country don't have the ability to club together to form a community, not even under the banner of the penny bun. 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.

Ten, kto nie nauczy? si? mówi?, zostanie na zawsze uwi?ziony w pu?apce.