Quotes from Olga Tokarczuk

Reject everything, do not look, shut your eyes and change your gaze, awaken another one that almost everyone has, but that few use.

the world itself demands to be narrated, and only then does it truly exist, only then can it flourish fully. But also that by telling the story of the world, we are changing the world. That is why God created the letters of the alphabet, that we might have the opportunity to narrate to him what he created. Reb Mordke always chuckled at this. "God is blind. Did you not know that?" he would say. "He created us that we would be his guides, his five senses.

je?eli kto? zaczyna zdanie od s?owa "zawsze", to znaczy, ze straci? kontakt ze ?wiatem, i ?e mówi o sobie

In a way, people like her, who wield a pen, can be dangerous. At once a suspicion of fakery springs to mind - that such a Person is not him or herself, but an eye that's constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences; in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality - its inexpressibility.

Everything about my own face that seemed to me familiar and obvious had vanished; what remained was a distinctive scattering of dots that symbolized the planets set against the celestial vault. I cannot be someone other than I am. How awful.

Fluidity, mobility, illusoriness—these are precisely the qualities that make us civilized.

They are more than travel hubs: this is a special category of city-state, with a stable location, but citizens in flux.They are airport-republics...(a)n example of an extroverted system,where the constitution is spelled out on every ticket, and where one's boarding pass is one's only identification as a citizen.

Long years of unhappiness cause a Person worse degradation than a fatal illness.

Literatura to szczególny rodzaj wiedzy, to... (...) ... doskona?o?? form nieprecyzyjnych.

A large tree, crooked and full of holes, survives for centuries without being cut down, because nothing could possibly be made out of it. This example should raise the spirits of people like us. Everyone knows the profit to be reaped from the useful, but nobody knows the benefit to be gained from the useless.

Gdyby tak mo?na odm?odzi? cz?owieka, jak drzewo. ?ci?? z niego z?e wspomnienia, zeskroba? ca?y ból, wszelkie rozczarowania, jak martw? tkank?; poobcina? b??dy, g?upie decyzje, pomy?ki, prze?wietli? my?li. I ?eby to mo?na by?o robi? po ka?dej zimie, ?eby si? w nowy rok wchodzi?o czystym i niewinnym. Wiadomo przecie? – która? z kolejnych zim nas zabije.

Fluidity, mobility, illusoriness-these are precisely the qualities that make us civilized. Barbarians don't travel. They simply go to destinations or conduct raids.

This was how the end must look. No deluge, no rains of fire, no Auschwitz, no comet. This is how the world will look when God has deserted it, whoever he is. Like an abandoned house, everything coated in cosmic dust, muggy and steeped in silence. Everything living will congeal and grow mold in the light that has no pulse and therefore is dead. In this spectral light everything will crumble.

One for sorrow, two for joy. So they said when I was a child, but there were fewer Magpies then.

S gledišta prirode nema korisnih i nekorisnih bi?a. To je samo glupavo razlikovanje koje primjenjuju ljudi." str. 156.

?ycie w t?umie jest gorsze ni? wi?zienie.

But children aren't people. Children become people when they wriggle out of your arms and say "no.

There are two points of view in the world: the frog's perspective and bird's-eye view. Any point in between just leads to chaos.

How wonderful – to translate from one language to another, and by so doing to bring people closer to one another – what a beautiful idea.

Gnjev uvijek za sobom ostavlja puno praznoga mjesta na koje se odmah, kao poplava, ulijeva tuga i te?e velika rijeka., bez po?etka i kraja. Suze, opet su se obnovili njihovi izvori." str. 235.

I find the satellite pictures and the curvature of the Earth very moving. So is it true that we live on the surface of a sphere, exposed to the gaze of the planets, left in a great void, where after the Fall the light was smashed to smithereens and blown apart? It is true. We should remember that every day, for we do tend to forget.

To my mind, Death should be followed by the annihilation of matter. That would be the best solution for the body. Like this, annihilated bodies would go straight back into the black holes whence they came. The Souls would travel at the speed of light into the light. If such a thing as the Soul exists.

Learning intuitively, we will immediately notice the deterministic necessity of the existence of all things. Everything that is necessary cannot be otherwise.

Once we have reached a certain age, it's hard to be reconciled to the fact that people are always going to be impatient with us.