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" A totalitarian power is mainly busy in keeping itself alive. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Busy
Itself
Totalitarian
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" In the West, people demonize Putin. They do not understand that there is a collective Putin, consisting of some millions of people who do not want to be humiliated by the West. There is a little piece of Putin in everyone. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Understand
Want
West
" I was always meant to study the humanities; I was no good at math or sciences. When it came time for me to work, it was Soviet times, and journalism wasn't that free or interesting of a space. There was a lot of censorship; it was difficult. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Space
Good
Interesting
" Flaubert called himself a human pen; I would say that I am a human ear. When I walk down the street and catch words, phrases, and exclamations, I always think - how many novels disappear without a trace! Disappear into darkness. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Words
Walk
Darkness
" 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
Beautiful
Women
Fishing
" 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. "
Svetlana Alexievich
People
Great
Age
" I'm not a public person. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Public
Person
" Humans have occupied a position in nature that they should not. It is impossible for humans to conquer nature. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Conquer
Impossible
Nature
" I can't rid myself of the feeling that war is a product of the male nature. "
Svetlana Alexievich
War
Product
Nature
" No book about Soviet sacrifice was as strong as the women's stories I heard as a child. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Child
Book
Women
" There are horrible periods in which entire nations sink into the plague of darkness and hatred. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Sink
Darkness
Hatred
" I love to sit on my own and think, not to be photographed all the time. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Think
Sit
Own
" Stalin's machine can be started up again at only a moment's notice: the same informers, the same denunciations, the same tortures. The same universal, all-devouring terror. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Only
Up
Again
" I'm interested in love and in death. Everything evolves from these things. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Everything
Death
Things
" I have always grappled with the fact that the truth cannot be packaged into one soul or one mind alone. It is something fragmented: there is so much to it; the truth is varied and scattered across the world. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Mind
Truth Is
Fact
" I don't love great ideas. I love the little human being. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Love
Great
Human
" The purpose of art is to accumulate the human within the human being. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Human Being
Purpose
Within
" 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
Work
Dark
Important
" There is this tradition, stretching back to Tacitus and Plutarch, that history belongs to the heroes, the emperors. But I grew up among simple people, and their stories just shattered me. It was painful that no one but me was listening to them. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Me
People
History
" The books that I'm writing, you can write them only when you're amongst your people. You're not going to find it on the Internet. You're not going to hear it there. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Find
Internet
People
" Every one of his characters has their own idea, their own thing they want to express. Dostoevsky just lets them do it. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Them
Characters
Idea
" 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
People
Together
Image
" I do not remember any questions in my childhood other than questions about death and about loss, and it was clear that the books that filled the house were not as interesting as the conversations outside. "
Svetlana Alexievich
House
Loss
Remember
" I take a very long time to write my books - from five to ten years. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Books
Years
Time
" America is a remarkable country, but I have a feeling that it's a different country after 9/11. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Different
Country
America
" My Ukrainian grandmother would tell amazing stories. She lost her father, and as children, we would always listen to her stories. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Amazing
Father
Children
" A man without a memory is only capable of doing evil, nothing else but evil. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Only
Doing
Evil
" I grew up in a village after the war, and in the village, there were almost only women. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Almost
Only
Up
" Freedom is not an instantaneous holiday, as we once dreamed. It is a road. A long road. We know this now. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Long
Now
Holiday
" Putin is not a politician. Putin is a KGB agent. And whatever he does is provocations, which KGB is usually involved in. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Politician
He
Whatever
" There are many oral historians in America, but my books are made using the rules of novel writing. I have a beginning, a plot, characters. "
Svetlana Alexievich
Beginning
Rules
Writing