Ten to 15 of my childhood friends from Minsk died of cancer. Chernobyl kills. Svetlana Alexievich More Quotes by Svetlana Alexievich More Quotes From Svetlana Alexievich It is occupation, a foreign invasion, i love the good Russian world, the humanitarian Russian world, but I do not love the Russian world of Beria, Stalin and Shoigu. Svetlana Alexievich arts For money I can buy one thing, I buy freedom. I take a very long time to write my books – from five to ten years, i have two new ideas for two new books, so I am glad that I will be free now to work on them. Svetlana Alexievich arts Real people speak in my books about the main events of the age such as the war, the Chernobyl disaster, and the downfall of a great empire, but I don't just record a dry history of events and facts, I'm writing a history of human feelings. Svetlana Alexievich arts Showing just the dark side doesn't always work. The important thing is to show what we can learn from dark things, what good we find there. Svetlana Alexievich good dark-side dark work What I'm concerned with is what I would call the missing history - the invisible imprint of our stay on Earth and in time. Svetlana Alexievich earth missing time history Putin has mobilized and gathered the desires of millions upon millions of people who have been lied to, cheated, who lost out in the new order of things - and in each of these people is a bit of Putin. They have come together to make the image we know as Putin. Putin himself is just the tip of an iceberg. Svetlana Alexievich new know together people My father was an important person, the director of the school. He could talk to anybody - simple or educated. He liked chess, fishing, and beautiful women. Svetlana Alexievich women simple beautiful father I don't hate. I love the Russian people. I love the Belarusan people... I love Ukraine very much. Svetlana Alexievich ukraine hate love people Freedom is not an instantaneous holiday, as we once dreamed. It is a road. A long road. We know this now. Svetlana Alexievich road holiday freedom long Reality has always attracted me like a magnet; it tortured and hypnotized me. I wanted to capture it on paper. Svetlana Alexievich me always capture reality Nobody thought the Soviet Union would collapse; it was a shock for everyone. Svetlana Alexievich everyone nobody thought soviet I don't remember men in our village after World War II: during the war, one out of four Belarusians perished, either fighting at the front or with the partisans. After the war, we children lived in a world of women. What I remember most is that women talked about love, not death. Svetlana Alexievich love men war death Hatred will always give birth to more and more hate, and love has the power to demolish the borders between us. Svetlana Alexievich will hate power love I used to live in a village, and I always loved listening to old people. Unfortunately, it was always women who were talking, because after the war, very few men were around. I spent my entire life living in the village. The village is always talking about itself; people are talking to each other as the village makes sense of itself. Svetlana Alexievich women men war life I want to live at home. You can only write at home. Svetlana Alexievich live you want home Many times, I have been shocked and frightened by human beings. I have experienced delight and revulsion. I have sometimes wanted to forget what I heard, to return to a time when I lived in ignorance. More than once, however, I have seen the sublime in people and wanted to cry. Svetlana Alexievich ignorance time sometimes people My wish is to humanize history. Svetlana Alexievich wish history 'Women's' war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. There are no heroes and incredible feats; there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things. Svetlana Alexievich colors women war people We were romantics in the 1990s and thought that communism was dead. But 10 years passed, and Putin came, and it became obvious that the process is reversible; that communism will, to varying degrees, return again and again. Svetlana Alexievich dead will thought communism Lukashenko is very much like Trump, because democracy and Trump are incompatible things. Svetlana Alexievich because things like democracy
