Quotes from Olga Tokarczuk

The first photograph I ever experienced consciously is a picture of my mother from before she gave birth to me. Unfortunately, it's a black-and-white photograph, which means that many of the details have been lost, turning into nothing but gray shapes.

I believe in a kind of literature which makes clear that, at a deeper level, below the surface, we are tied together through invisible but existing threads. A kind of literature which talks about a lively, ever-changing world of unity, of which we are a small, but not insignificant part.

But sometimes I fear that the people of my country can unite only beside victims' bodies, over coffins and in cemeteries. Like tribesmen who dance around old totems, we ignore the living and can only appreciate the dead.

The best conversations are with yourself. At least there's no risk of a misunderstanding.

I wasn't in a hurry. I never have to be in any particular place at any particular time. Let time watch me, not me it.

That's what I dislike most of all in people — cold irony. It's a very cowardly attitude to mock or belittle everything, never be committed to anything, not feel tied to anything. Like an impotent man who can't experience pleasure himself, but will do all he can to ruin it for others

She's a loner, she doesn't care about being around people. So neither failure nor success concerns her.

They weren't real travelers: they left in order to return. And they were relieved when they got back, with a sense of having fulfilled an obligation.

To someone from nowhere, every movement turns into a return.

Someday he would write his memoirs, when his adventures had arranged themselves into a suitably attractive package.

A man's free to do what he wants with his life, until he falls foul of the banks.

But it also crossed my mind that in spite of all, in spite of our fragility and ignorance, we have an incredible advantage over the stars — it is for us that time works, giving us a major opportunity to transform the suffering, aching world into a happy and peaceful one.