Svetlana Quotes & Sayings

records the lives of ideas. People don't write it, time does. Human truth is just a nail that everybody hangs their hats on. — Svetlana Alexievich

No one knows what's in the other world. It's better here. More familiar. — Svetlana Alexievich

We've worshipped many gods. Some have been consigned to the scrapheap, others to museums. Let us make Truth into a god! A god before whom each of us shall answer according to his own conscience, and not as a class, or a university year, or a collective, or a people... Let us be charitable to those who have paid a greater price for insight than we ourselves. Remember: 'I brought my friend, and my own truth, back with me from a raid.. Head, arms and legs, all severed, and his skin flayed... — Svetlana Alexievich

What do you think of all this? Am I a friend or foe - or a little of each? Are the important things black and white, or maybe a little gray? — Svetlana Chmakova

Twice a week we attended a political 'seminar', where we were continually told that we were doing our sacred duty to help make the border totally secure. — Svetlana Alexievich

I'm afraid of freedom, it feels like some drunk guy could show up and burn my dacha at any moment. — Svetlana Alexievich

That's how it was in the beginning. We didn't just lose a town, we lost our whole lives. — Svetlana Alexievich

Fear is more human than bravery, you're scared and you're sorry, at least for yourself, but you force your fear back into your subconscious. — Svetlana Alexievich

At first we were all turned into animals. The very word "Chernobyl" is like a signal. Everyone turns their head to look at you. He's from there! That — Svetlana Alexievich

Question: Is the world as it's depicted in words the real world? Words stand between the person and his soul. And — Svetlana Alexievich

At first, the question was, Who's to blame? But then, when we learned more, we started thinking, What should we do? — Svetlana Alexievich

Sometimes you may even have a stunt double do certain things for you, but when it's close-up and it's really dramatic, that's when you really need to concentrate. You cannot get body doubles or anybody else to do it for you. — Svetlana Khodchenkova

The nostalgic is looking for a spiritual addressee. Encountering silence, he looks for memorable signs, desperately misreading them. — Svetlana Boym

There you are: a normal person. A little person. You're just like everyone else - you go to work, you return from work. You get an average salary. Once a year you go on vacation. You're a normal person! And then one day you're suddenly turned into a Chernobyl person. Into an animal, something that everyone's interested in, and that no one knows anything about. — Svetlana Alexievich

Moscow seethes and bubbles and gasps for air. It's always thirsting for something new, the newest events, the latest sensation. Everyone wants to be the first to know. It's the rhythm of life today. — Svetlana Alliluyeva

Do you know that it can be a sin to give birth? I'd never heard those words before. Katya — Svetlana Alexievich

We'll die, and then we'll become science, — Svetlana Alexievich

After I got back I couldn't bear to wear my 'pre-war' jeans and shirts. They belonged to some stranger, although they still smelt of me, as my mother assured me. That stranger no longer exists. — Svetlana Alexievich

All right, let's consider some history here. I see a number of girls are wearing pants. This used to be frowned upon. In 1938, Helen Hulick was jailed for wearing slacks -- put behind bars.

Do you think society should have the right to jail or punish you for what you choose to wear? — Svetlana Chmakova

I knew well in advance even before I stepped on the stage for my first event that I was going to lose. — Svetlana Khorkina

True. The school admin decided that a girls clothes were more important than her education. — Svetlana Chmakova

The cool enchantment of evening has arrived after the prostrating heat of summer's day and we lie quietly in anticipation of Your luminous appearance - Mysterious Selene, Whose Lunar Orb relieves the dark of night. — Lady Svetlana

We don't need anything. Just listen to us and try to understand. Society is good at doing things, 'giving' medical help, pensions, flats. But all this so-called giving has been paid for in very expensive currency. Our blood. — Svetlana Alexievich

The commentator says: The West is trying to spread panic, telling lies about the accident. And then they show the dosimeter again, measuring some fish on a plate, or a chocolate bar, or some pancakes at an open pancake stand. It was all a lie. The military dosimeters then in use by our armed forces were designed to measure the radioactive background, not individual products. This level of lying, this incredible level, with which Chernobyl is connected in our minds, was comparable only to the level of lies during the big war. — Svetlana Alexievich

Is there anything more frightening than people? — Svetlana Alexievich

I don't want to leave. — Svetlana Chmakova

A bottle of vodka costs as much as a coat used to. And something to snack on? Half a kilo of salami is half a month's pension. — Svetlana Alexievich

Well, I admit it. I had the greatest respect for the Afghan people, even while I was shooting and killing them. I still do. You could even say I love them. I like their songs and prayers, as peaceful and timeless as their mountains. — Svetlana Alexievich

Why is it that seventeenand eighteen-year-olds find it easier to kill than thirty-year-olds, for example? Because they have no pity, that's why. — Svetlana Alexievich

I attended my first Star Wars convention right after freshman year of college, when the wounds of the prequels were fresh. It was a big milestone for me. "Finally," I told my roommate, Svetlana, "I'll get to be myself and go among my people." "I don't understand," Svetlana said. "Who were you before? Literally the first thing you did on arriving at college was unpack your lightsabers. Do you think you've been hiding? If this is you concealing your love of Star Wars, what would it look like if you let it hang out? Would you just dress up as Jabba the Hutt all the time?" That wasn't a bad idea, I thought. Maybe I should. — Alexandra Petri

We still have our television and our books, our imagination. Children grow up in their houses, without the forest and the river. They can only look at them. These are completely different children. And I go to them and recite Pushkin, who I thought was eternal. And then I have this terrible thought: what if our entire culture is just an old trunk with a bunch of stale manuscripts? Everything I love . . . He: — Svetlana Alexievich

During the war, one out of every four Belarussians was killed; today, one out of every five Belarussians lives on contaminated land. This amounts to 2.1 million people, of whom 700,000 are children. Among the demographic factors responsible for the depopulation of Belarus, radiation is number one. In the Gomel and Mogilev regions, which suffered the most from Chernobyl, mortality rates exceed birth rates by 20%. As — Svetlana Alexievich

The soul will fly home of its own accord, but shipping a coffin is pretty expensive. — Svetlana Alexievich

Reality has always attracted me like a magnet, tortured and hypnotized me, and I wanted to capture it on paper. So I immediately appropriated this genre of actual human voices and confessions, witness evidences and documents. This is how I hear and see the world - as a chorus of individual voices and a collage of everyday details. In this way all my mental and emotional potential is realized to the full. In this way I can be simultaneously a writer, reporter, sociologist, psychologist and preacher. — Svetlana Alexievich

I want success. I want to do something. I really want people to remember my name. — Svetlana Kuznetsova

He suddenly opened his eyes and looked at everyone in the room. It was a terrible gaze, mad or maybe furious and full of fear of death ... Then something incomprehensible and frightening happened ... He suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something above and bringing down a curse on us all ... The next moment, after a final effort, the spirit wrenched itself free of the flesh. — Svetlana Alliluyeva

My mom says . . . there are bad people who hurt others for fun . . . and there are good people who do it by accident. Like, they make a mistake?

I think you're a good person. — Svetlana Chmakova

Life was full of adventure: I learnt the smell of danger - I've got a sixth sense for it now. We're homesick for it, some of us; it's called the 'Afghan syndrome'. — Svetlana Alexievich

Show me a fantasy novel about Chernobyl--there isn't one! Because reality is more fantastic. — Svetlana Alexievich

Athena, Demeter, Andromeda, Cassiopeia ~ dearest thoughtful Svetlana, your glorious angelic light outshines the entire goddess pantheon of Mount Olympus, , your radiant splendor surpasses the luminous sunsets of a thousand distant worlds, , in all my galactic travels you are the only star whose elegant sway has the power to swing me into orbit, , may our cosmic dance last forever, , may our mutual tidal gravity eternally signal our telepathic presence in each others soulful wandering lives — Sean Terrence Best

The melody of a religious feeling is the music of life itself. To those who do not hear it I could not explain what it sounds like ... If the spark isn't smoldering somewhere inside one, no efforts can ever bring it into existence. Water cannot catch fire. — Svetlana Alliluyeva

The most important thing is spiritual labor...Books...You can wear the same suit for twenty years, two coats are enough for a lifetime, but you can't live without Pushkin or the complete works of Gorky. — Svetlana Alexievich

There's a note on the door: "Dear kind person, Please don't look for valuables here. We never had any. Use whatever you want, but don't trash the place. We'll be back." I saw signs on other houses in different colors - "Dear house, forgive us!" People said goodbye to their homes like they were people. Or they'd written: "we're leaving in the morning," or, "we're leaving at night," and they'd put the date and even the time. There were notes written on school notebook paper: "Don't beat the cat. Otherwise the rats will eat everything." And then in a child's handwriting: "Don't kill our Zhulka. She's a good cat." [Closes his eyes.] — Svetlana Alexievich

Russian novels don't teach you how to become successful. — Svetlana Alexievich

But I'm never lonely, a man who believes can never be lonely. I ride around the villages - I used to find spaghetti, flour - even vegetable oil. Canned fruit. Now I go to the cemeteries - people leave food and drink for the dead. But the dead don't need it. They don't mind. In the fields there's wild grain, and in the forest there are mushrooms and berries. Freedom is here. I — Svetlana Alexievich

These people had already seen what for everyone else is still unknown. I felt like I was recording the future. Svetlana — Svetlana Alexievich

Seventy-plus years in the Marxist-Leninist laboratory gave rise to a new man: Homo sovieticus. Some see — Svetlana Alexievich

My husband, a man with a university degree, an engineer, seriously tried to convince me that it was an act of terrorism. An enemy diversion. A lot of people at the time thought that. But I remembered how I'd once been on a train with a man who worked in construction who told me about the building of the Smolensk nuclear plant: how much cement, boards, nails, and sand was stolen from the construction site and sold to neighboring villages. In exchange for money, for a bottle of vodka. People — Svetlana Alexievich

There's something immoral, voyeuristic, about peering too closely at a person's courage in the face of danger. — Svetlana Alexievich

Religion means a binding. If a man does not feel himself a part of the Universe, and does not hear its pulse, he is not religious. But once he has heard that pulse, he will be hearing it always. Every day his life will replenish itself from this inexhaustible source, eternal and powerful as the sun. — Svetlana Alliluyeva

It doesn't count if it's from friends, right? — Svetlana Chmakova

Come get your apples! Chernobyl apples!' Someone told her not to advertise that, no one will buy them. 'Don't worry!' she says. 'They buy them anyway. Some need them for their mother-in-law, some for their boss. — Svetlana Alexievich

If they're friends, then they've got your back . . . whether you're there or not. Friends won't "forget" about you. — Svetlana Chmakova

This is how [the] sport has contributed to my personality, toughness and discipline. I have a plan, and I work on it. I was going to add [the] before the word sport since I thought was either a typo or a problem translating what she said, but then I thought it made sense without it too , so I left it as is. Just know that that's not a typo on my part. — Svetlana Khorkina

Goddess of immemorable cloudy veils, reveal your magickal powers so we may re-attune our psyches to your multi-dimensional realities and thereby draw your power to heal this worldly habitat and return it to the provocative Sisterhood of Your Milky Way. — Lady Svetlana

-"Do you know what it's like to be condemned to love?"
-"But isn't it always like that?" Svetlana asked, trembling with indignation. "When people love each other, when they find each other out of thousands and millions of people. It's always destiny!"
Once again I sensed that infinitely naive girl in her, the girl who couldn't hate anything except herself. The girl who was already beginning to disappear.
-"No, Sveta, haven't you ever heard love compared to a flower?"
-"Yes."
-"A flower can be grown, Sveta. But it can be bought too, or given as a gift."
-"Did Anton buy it?"
-"No," I said, a bit too sharply. "It was a gift. From destiny."
-"What difference does that make? If it is love?"
-"Sveta, cut flowers are beautiful, but they don't live for long. They're already dying, even the ones that are carefully placed in a crystal vase and given fresh water. — Sergei Lukyanenko

They, our parents, lived through a great catastrophe, and we needed to live through it, too. Otherwise we'd never become real people. That's how we're made. If we just work each day and eat well - that would be strange and intolerable! We — Svetlana Alexievich

He's going to die." I understood later on that you can't think that way. I cried in the bathroom. None of the mothers cry in the hospital rooms. They cry in the toilets, the baths. I come back cheerful: "Your cheeks are red. You're getting better." "Mom, take me out of the hospital. I'm going to die here. Everyone here dies." Now where am I going to cry? In the bathroom? There's a line for the bathroom - everyone like me is in that line. — Svetlana Alexievich

They're all Tajiks, they have the same Koran, the same faith, but the Kulyabs kill the Pamirs, and the Pamirs kill the Kulyabs. First they'd go out into the city square, yelling, praying. I wanted to understand what was happening, so I went too. I asked one of the old men: "What are you protesting against?" They said: "Against the Parliament. They told us this was a very bad person, this Parliament. — Svetlana Alexievich

They die, but no one's really asked us. No one's asked what we've been through. What we saw. No one wants to hear about death. About what scares them. But I was telling you about love. About my love . . . Lyudmilla — Svetlana Alexievich

One of the poets says somewhere that animals are a different people. I killed them by the ten, by the hundred, thousand, not even knowing what they were called. I destroyed their houses, their secrets. And buried them. Buried them. Leonid — Svetlana Alexievich

Instead of a Motherland, we live in a huge supermarket. If this is freedom, I don't need it. To hell with it! — Svetlana Alexievich

By continually increasing the difficulty of the sport, we are discouraging younger athletes from starting and continuing in the sport. But most importantly, we are losing the beauty of our sport. We do not want gymnastics to lose what makes it so great - its artistic beauty. — Svetlana Boginskaya

Yur Karyakin once wrote: 'We should not judge a man's life by his perception of himself. Such a perception may be tragically inadequate.' And I read something in Kafka to the effect that man was irretrievably lost within himself. — Svetlana Alexievich

All large cities are alike at night. — Svetlana Alliluyeva

At that time my notions of nuclear power were utterly idyllic. At school and at the university we'd been taught that this was a magical factory that made "energy out of nothing," where people in white robes sat and pushed buttons. Chernobyl blew up when we weren't prepared. — Svetlana Alexievich

According to Abkhazian custom, the time you spend with guests around the table doesn't count toward your lifespan because you're drinking wine and enjoying yourself. — Svetlana Alexievich

It was as simple as that. And as complex. — Svetlana Meritt

A sense of religion is something one is born with, like a musical ear. One can develop it, cultivate it, enrich it, but if one hasn't got its seed to begin with, no powers of the intellect, no sophistication of 'evidence' can awaken it. — Svetlana Alliluyeva

repentance, the response would be, "What do I have to repent for?" Everyone thought of — Svetlana Alexievich

Chernobyl, while an accident in the sense that no one intentionally set it off, was also the deliberate product of a culture of cronyism, laziness, and a deep-seated indifference toward the general population. — Svetlana Alexievich

Chernobyl is a theme worthy of Dostoevsky, an attempt to justify mankind. — Svetlana Alexievich

Pretty soon, I'll be decomposing into phosphorous, calcium, and so on. Who else will you find to tell you the truth? All that's left are the archives. Pieces of paper. And the truth is... I worked at an archive myself, I can tell you first hand: paper lies even more than people do. — Svetlana Alexievich

Any little knot, that was already a wound on him. I clipped my nails down till they bled so I wouldn't accidentally cut him. None of the nurses could approach him; if they needed anything they'd call me. And — Svetlana Alexievich

Being from Russia, I respect all of the comic books American people love. We do follow it a lot. — Svetlana Khodchenkova

Oh! Great Lady of Fascination! We arise in somnambulant awe and dance entranced as you glide slowly and softly through the Heavenly Dome and suffuse our presence with unfathomable desires for faerie worlds, where all is order, where all is beauty, where nuances of quality proliferate miraculously in myraids of delicious subtleties. — Lady Svetlana

When you have once gained sight, it is impossible to feign blindness. — Svetlana Alliluyeva

We were told that we had to win. Against whom? The atom? Physics? The universe? Victory is not an event for us, but a process. — Svetlana Alexievich

can do without a lot of things, the only thing I can't do without is the past. [ — Svetlana Alexievich

The nostalgic is never a native but a displaced person who mediates between the local and the universal. — Svetlana Boym

I realize how much ballet gave me, and because of ballet, I'm known as a graceful gymnast. — Svetlana Boginskaya

There are many of us here. A whole street. That's what it's called--Chernobylskaya. These people worked at the station their whole lives. A lot of them still go there to work on a provisional basis, that's how they work there now, no one lives there anymore. They have bad diseases, they're invalids, but they don't leave their jobs, they're scared to even think of the reactor closing down. Who needs them now anywhere else? Often they die. In an instant. They just drop--someone will be walking, he falls down, goes to sleep, never wakes up. He was carrying flowers for his nurse and his heart stopped. They die, but no one's really asked us. No one's asked what we've been through. What we saw. No one wants to hear about death. About what scares them.

But I was telling you about love. About my love...

-- Lyudmila, Ignatenko,
wife of deceased fireman, Vasily Ignatenko — Svetlana Alexievich

You know, party every day until 6 a.m. and then sleep during the day. — Svetlana Kuznetsova

you can survive without bread, but without love you're dead — Svetlana Alexievich

Everyone thought of themselves as a victim, never a willing accomplice. One — Svetlana Alexievich

No one had taught us what freedom means. We'd only ever learned how to die for freedom. — Svetlana Alexievich

Hard work is always hard work, for young gymnasts and old gymnasts. Whoever can handle this will be a champion. — Svetlana Boginskaya

If I am in Moscow for example and one night I decide to go out to my friend's house why should I come back at eight o'clock in the morning to my house to be checked? — Svetlana Kuznetsova

Under the mystichood ofNameless Bride, we grope in Her Sacred Darkness for plasmatic encounter, the fifth ionized state of matter. Our mundane sight of differentation and separation recedes into the magickal Abyss of Blackness where all is touch. We feel each other as tactile presences whose extended dimension stretches to the stars only to coalesce beyond galactic expanses in the white and worm-holes of Her ever spiraling Gown of Worlds beyond Worlds. Let us feel Her concrescence as we stroke each unique form in the unfathomable dimensions of Her perfect formfulness - ever-changing, ever-new, ever-variable in the rainbow myriads of infinite spasms of delight. — Lady Svetlana

It turned out the officer was escorting the soldier home. He'd gone mad: 'He's been digging ever since we left Kabul. — Svetlana Alexievich

Sandra to Christie on Matt: So he's been a meanie today has he. The boy's got the subtlety of a brick to the head. I do apologize. — Svetlana Chmakova

Oh! Dione of Opalescent Skin Ethereal. Your oospheric containment disperses argentous streams of velvety rays that cradle recesses of soul in gossamer of beatific visions.La Luna! Your enigmatic smile. Your watery countenance stirs the imagination and bestows inspiration on those receptive to Your Sacred Gifts. — Lady Svetlana

Back then everyone was saying: "We're going to die, we're going to die. By the year 2000, there won't be any Belarussians left. — Svetlana Alexievich

I like old people, just as I like old trees: in their shadow there is freshness and peace, one admires them, and around them everything is so calm. — Svetlana Alliluyeva

The mysterious Russian soul... Everyone wants to understand it. They read Dostoevsky: what's behind that soul of theirs? Well, behind our soul there's just more soul. — Svetlana Alexievich

isn't a hair, you can't just pull it out. And no ritual can make it stick. Why cry over it? Who — Svetlana Alexievich

Our people need freedom like a monkey needs glasses. No one would know what to do with it. — Svetlana Alexievich

I often thought that the simples fact, the mechanical fact, is no closer to the truth than a vague feeling, rumor, vision. Why repeat the facts - they cover up our feelings. The development of these feelings, the spilling of these feelings past the facts, is what fascinantes me. I try to find them, collect them, protect them. — Svetlana Alexievich

I accepted the official line so completely that even now, after all I've read and heard, I still have a minute hope that our lives weren't entirely wasted. It's the self-preservation instinct at work. — Svetlana Alexievich

I know full well what it means to dream. My whole childhood, I begged for a bicycle, and I never did get one. — Svetlana Alexievich