Quotes from Olga Tokarczuk

Historie ?ycia nie s? tematem do dyskusji. Powinno si? ich wys?ucha? i zrewan?owa? si? tym samym.

In reality, movement doesn't exist. Like the turtle in Zeno's paradox, we're heading nowhere, if anything we're simply wandering into the interior of a moment, and there is no end, nor any destination.

ograniczenie umys?owe i okrucie?stwo ludzkie nie zna granic.

Prawda jest jak s?kacz, sk?ada si? z wielu warstw, które kr?c? si? wokó? siebie, raz siebie zawieraj?, a raz same s? zawierane przez inne. Prawda to jest co?, co mo?na wyra?a? wieloma opowie?ciami, bo jest jak ten ogród, do którego weszli m?drcy: ka?dy widzia? co innego.

People are always far away.

People think they live more intensely than animals, than plants, and especially than things. Animals sense that they live more intensely than plants and things. Plants dream that they live more intensely than things. But things last, and this lasting is more alive than anything else.

Within our bodies disintegration inexorably advances; soon we shall fall sick and die. Our loved ones will leave us, the memory of them will dissolve in the tumult; nothing will remain. Just a few clothes in the wardrobe and someone in a photograph, no longer recognized. The most precious memories will dissipate. Everything will sink into darkness and vanish.

Desire in itself is empty, in other words it merely indicates direction, but never destination; destinations, in any case, always remain phantasmagoric and unclear; the closer we get to them, the more enigmatic they become. By no means is it possible to ever actually attain a given destination, nor, in so doing, appease desire.

Imagination is essentially creative; it 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. Sometimes along the way something in it gets distorted and changes. Therefore, if they are strong enough, all human desires come true — but not always entirely as expected.

You know what, sometimes it seems to me we're living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what's good and what isn't, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves . . . And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other.

At night I observe Venus, closely following the transitions of this beautiful Damsel. I prefer her as the Evening Star, when she appears as if out of nowhere, as if by magic, and goes down behind the Sun. A spark of eternal light. It is at Dusk that the most interesting things occur, for that is when simple differences fade away. I could live in everlasting Dusk.

There must be some sort of drugs. I'd like that. To stop me from feeling anything, or worrying, to let me sleep. Is that possible

Whose intellect can have had the audacity to judge who is better, and who worse?

Annushka also needs to feel someone's gaze on her, to feel that her crying is witnessed by someone, to feel it isn't just addressing a void.

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

When we were young we thought of old age as an ailment that affected only other people.

It is widely known, after all, that real life takes place in movement.

Gdyby umie? spojrze? tak, jak Jenta to widzi, zobaczy?oby si?, ?e w istocie ?wiat sk?ada si? ze s?ów, które raz powiedziane, roszcz? sobie odt?d pretensje do wszelkiego porz?dku i wszystko wydaje si? dzia? pod ich dyktando, wszystko im podlega.

The truth is terrible: describing is destroying.

They weren't real travelers: they left in order to return.

What is life, after all if not dancing on graves?

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.

Everything is hypothetical in hell.

This is in essence what interested him the most: In what way do such distinct substances as the body and the soul connect in the human body and act upon one another?