Quotes from Olga Tokarczuk

I found Leonora Carrington's 'The Hearing Trumpet' really funny.

I like to come back to the science fiction of Stanislaw Lem. He is comforting but also funny, and although I know his books, there's always something new to discover.

I didn't believe that the Soviet Union would ever break down.

I think I always have many ideas for books in my head. It's like a forest full of mushrooms. Some are big, some are small.

The first photograph I ever experienced consciously is a picture of my mother from before she gave birth to me. Unfortunately, it's a black-and-white photograph, which means that many of the details have been lost, turning into nothing but gray shapes.

I believe in a kind of literature which makes clear that, at a deeper level, below the surface, we are tied together through invisible but existing threads. A kind of literature which talks about a lively, ever-changing world of unity, of which we are a small, but not insignificant part.

I adore Stanley Kubrick, all of his films were different, not just in subject but tonally.

I tell stories and try to do it honestly so that people are interested and enjoy them.

I think that first-person narration is very characteristic of contemporary optics, in which the individual performs the role of subjective center of the world.

Two centuries ago, when our nation lost its sovereignty and was partitioned among Russia, Prussia and Austria, Polish Romantics like the poet and nationalist Adam Mickiewicz declared that independence would come only with great sacrifice. Ever since, this myth of the martyr, or messianic victim, has emerged during times of national crisis.

But sometimes I fear that the people of my country can unite only beside victims' bodies, over coffins and in cemeteries. Like tribesmen who dance around old totems, we ignore the living and can only appreciate the dead.

But the fact is we did have colonies in the east of Poland, we did have a slave economy there. But this is not common knowledge - or part of our national myth. It goes against the current romanticised view of the government, and much of the country, that Poles have always been victims, never oppressors.

In a healthy, normal society, people can disagree with one another, even have diametrically opposing views, and this does not at all mean that they must hate one another. The Polish authorities, however, have made the division of Poles their primary task.

The views I have, the books I write, are read as political, or even as manifestos.

The human psyche evolved in order to defend itself against seeing the truth. To prevent us from catching sight of the mechanism. The psyche is our defense system - it makes sure we'll never understand what's going on around us. Its main task is to filter information, even though the capabilities of our brains are enormous. For it would be impossible for us to carry the weight of this knowledge. Because every tiny particle of the world is made of suffering.

The best conversations are with yourself. At least there's no risk of a misunderstanding.

I wasn't in a hurry. I never have to be in any particular place at any particular time. Let time watch me, not me it.

Everything will pass. The wise Man knows this from the start, and has no regrets.

Sometimes it's as if I'm composed of nothing but symptoms of illness, I am a phantom built out of pain.

That's what I dislike most of all in people – cold irony. 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

Then you realize: night gives the world back its natural, original appearance, without suger-coating it; day is a flight of fancy, light a slight exception, an oversight, a disruption of the order. The world in fact is dark, almost black. Motionless and cold.

Speaking does harm, sows confusion and weakens things that are obvious. Speaking makes me tremble inside. I don't think I have ever said anything really important in my entire life -- there's a lack of words for the most important things anyway. (I must make a list of missing words -- top of it I'll put a verb that means something in between "I sense" and "I see.")

Winter mornings are made of steel; they have a metallic taste and sharp edges. On a Wednesday in January, at seven in the morning, it's plain to see that the world was not made for Man, and definitely not for his comfort or pleasure.

Move. Get going. Blessed is he who leaves.