I name the genre that I write in as 'novel of voices.'
— Svetlana Alexievich
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.
I love the good Russian world, the humanitarian Russian world, but I do not love the Russian world of Beria, Stalin, and Shoigu.
I'm interested in the history of the soul: the everyday life of the soul, the things that the big picture of history usually omits - or disdains.
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.
When people talk, it matters how they place words next to each other.
I've known since I was five that I wanted to be a writer.
I was born in a big city - Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine - but when I was a child, my father moved us back to his homeland in Minsk.
Nobody thought the Soviet Union would collapse; it was a shock for everyone.
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.
I don't think we should be deceived that art is such a moral thing.
Art is always kind of snooping and listening in.
Freedom is not an instantaneous holiday, as we once dreamed. It is a road. A long road. We know this now.
I see the world as voices, as colors, as it were. From book to book, I change, the subjects change, but the narrative thread remains the same.
I love the lone human voice. It is my greatest love and passion.
I grew up in the countryside.
What I'm concerned with is what I would call the missing history - the invisible imprint of our stay on Earth and in time.
My wish is to humanize history.
For money, I can buy one thing: I buy freedom.
The subjects I wanted to write about - the mystery of the human soul, evil - didn't interest newspapers, and news reporting bored me.
I collect the everyday life of feelings, thoughts, and words. I collect the life of my time.
I don't hate. I love the Russian people. I love the Belarusan people... I love Ukraine very much.
I am a writer who happens to use some tools of journalism.
I couldn't get published for three years. Then the times changed: glasnost, perestroika. So, for three years, I wasn't allowed to publish 'The Unwomanly Face of War,' but then it changed.
From the point of view of art, the butcher and the victim are equal as people. You need to see the people.
I have collected the history of 'domestic,' 'indoor' socialism, bit by bit. The history of how it played out in the human soul. I am drawn to that small space called a human being... a single individual. In reality, that is where everything happens.
I have three homes: my Belarusian land, the homeland of my father, where I have lived my whole life; Ukraine, the homeland of my mother, where I was born; and Russia's great culture, without which I cannot imagine myself. All are very dear to me.
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.
Why do I write? I have been called a writer of catastrophes, but that isn't true. I am always looking for words of love. Hate will not save us. Only love.
In the post-Soviet era, instead of freedom, various stripes of autocratic-totalitarianism have flourished: Russian, Belarusian, Kazakh... We are finding our way out from under the debris of the 'Red Empire' slowly and tentatively.
I always aim to understand how much humanity is contained in each human being and how I can protect this humanity in a person.
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.
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.
I want to live at home. You can only write at home.
All of history misses out on the history of the soul. Human passions are so often not included in history.
I take a very long time to write my books - from five to ten years.
I've been searching for a genre that would be most adequate to my vision of the world to convey how my ear hears and my eyes see life. I tried this and that, and finally, I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves. But I don't just record a dry history of events and facts; I'm writing a history of human feelings.
A totalitarian power is mainly busy in keeping itself alive.
Putin is not a politician. Putin is a KGB agent. And whatever he does is provocations, which KGB is usually involved in.
Women tell things in more interesting ways. They live with more feeling. They observe themselves and their lives. Men are more impressed with action. For them, the sequence of events is more important.
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.
We thought we'd leave communism behind, and everything would turn out fine. But it turns out you can't leave this and become free, because these people don't understand what freedom is.
I'm interested in little people. 'The little, great people' is how I would put it, because suffering expands people.
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.
I grew up in a village after the war, and in the village, there were almost only women.
The purpose of art is to accumulate the human within the human being.
Love is what brings us into this world.
Reality has always attracted me like a magnet; it tortured and hypnotized me. I wanted to capture it on paper.
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.
Ten to 15 of my childhood friends from Minsk died of cancer. Chernobyl kills.
