Svetlana Alexievich Quotes

“What helps me? That we are used to living together. Communally. We are communal people. With us everything is in common - both happiness and tears. We know how to suffer and how to tell people about our suffering. Suffering justifies our hard and ungainly life. For us pain is art. I must admit, women boldly set out this path.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, War's Unwomanly Face

“What is it like, radiation? Maybe they show it in the movies? Have you seen it? Is it white, or what? Some people say it has no color and no smell, and other people say that it’s black. Like earth. But if it’s colorless, then it’s like God. God is everywhere but you can’t see Him. They scare us! The apples are hanging in the garden, the leaves are on the trees, the potatoes are in the fields. I don’t think there was any Chernobyl, they made it up. They tricked people. My sister left with her husband. Not far from here, twenty kilometers. They lived there two months, and the neighbor comes running: ‘Your cow sent radiation to my cow! She’s falling down.’ ‘How’d she send it?’ 'Through the air, that’s how, like dust. It flies.’ 'Just fairy tales! Stories and more stories.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster