I write books to open people's minds, to present new perspectives, to make people realize that what they think is obvious is not so obvious, that you can look at a trivial situation from a different angle and suddenly reveal other meanings and levels.

Olga Tokarczuk

You Write Via

In today's world everything is political. We are a statement - our clothes, haircut, the way we act.

Olga Tokarczuk

Men World Way

Reality is like a doughnut: Everything that is good and funny and juicy is outside the center, which is just emptiness.

Olga Tokarczuk

Good Funny Which

We know so much about planets and the universe and small particles and we do not know anything about the inner state of our own bodies, we do not know about this microcosm we have inside our skin.

Olga Tokarczuk

Art Verse Universe

In a certain sense we can be proud to have introduced this hairstyle to Europe. 'Plica polonica' should be added to the list of our inventions, alongside crude oil, pierogi and vodka.

Olga Tokarczuk

Vodka Vent T

I decided to write a crime novel. That genre was at the height of its popularity in Poland, so I thought it might earn me a bit of cash to go on with my work on 'The Books of Jacob.' I shut myself away for a few months and devoted myself entirely to 'Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.'

Olga Tokarczuk

Work Your You

Poland was once a powerful imperial country that disappeared from maps of Europe for more than 100 years. It was partitioned and occupied by the Nazis and the Russians... We pop up and disappear and we do not trust what we are told to believe.

Olga Tokarczuk

Trust Power Art

Novels can change attitudes. Maybe we should speak quietly otherwise politicians will use novels as propaganda.

Olga Tokarczuk

Change Attitude Wise

Seeing everything means recognizing the ultimate fact that all things that exist are mutually connected into a single whole, even if the connections between them are not yet known to us.

Olga Tokarczuk

Whole Who Very

Two centuries ago, when our nation lost its sovereignty and was partitioned among Russia, Prussia and Austria, Polish Romantics like the poet and nationalist Adam Mickiewicz declared that independence would come only with great sacrifice. Ever since, this myth of the martyr, or messianic victim, has emerged during times of national crisis.

Olga Tokarczuk

Time Romantic Independence

I dream of Poland becoming a modern society that is defined not by the crippling nature of history, but by our individual achievements, a sense of our own self-worth and ideas for the future.

Olga Tokarczuk

Society Nature Men

I got my first passport in 1989, when I was 28.

Olga Tokarczuk

T Sport Port

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.

Olga Tokarczuk

Art World Which

I try to do my job and be a decent person, and a decent person has the courage to face what is not necessarily pleasant, what is perhaps dark and troublesome.

Olga Tokarczuk

Courage Age Try

I think the deepest level of our freedom is being able to change our identity.

Olga Tokarczuk

Freedom Change Think

A novel should tell a story, be a pleasure to read, and at the same time it should be thought-provoking, even a bit instructive.

Olga Tokarczuk

Time Tory Tim

I realized that we don't travel in such a linear way anymore but rather jump from one point to another and back again. So I got this idea for a 'constellation' novel recounting experiences that were separate from each other but could still be connected on different psychological, physical and political levels.

Olga Tokarczuk

Travel Experience Were

The world is a fabric we weave daily on the great looms of information, discussions, films, books, gossip, little anecdotes.

Olga Tokarczuk

Great World Us

I believe in literature which ties people together, that highlights what people have in common, despite the differences - color, sexual orientation, or anything which may separate us on the surface.

Olga Tokarczuk

Which Us Together

I create doubt in the reader's mind. That is what literature is for: to provoke, to raise doubts, to talk about things that are not obvious.

Olga Tokarczuk

Us Things Thing

It's impossible to be ethnically pure.

Olga Tokarczuk

T Pure Possible

I think I always have many ideas for books in my head. It's like a forest full of mushrooms. Some are big, some are small.

Olga Tokarczuk

I believe absolutely that words must be treated as material weapons, every invective or threat as violence and aggression.

Olga Tokarczuk

Reading English novels I always adore the ability to write without fear about inner psychological things that are so delicate.

Olga Tokarczuk

Unfortunately, as hate speech has proliferated, no one in Poland has been held responsible. The police take people's statements and dismiss them. This tacit consent has demoralized weakened minds.

Olga Tokarczuk

I didn't believe that the Soviet Union would ever break down.

Olga Tokarczuk

We invented a history of Poland as a tolerant, open country, a country that has not been tainted by any atrocities committed against its minorities.

Olga Tokarczuk

There is no official censorship in literature, but I feel a certain fear when I see that a kind of self-censorship is developing in Poland. Authors are somehow afraid of expressing what they really think or feel because they fear political consequences.

Olga Tokarczuk

When I was a teenager I fell in love with TS Eliot.

Olga Tokarczuk

If your country is wiped off the map and your language is banned, if your literature has to serve a cause, it becomes, however brilliant, rather hard to travel.

Olga Tokarczuk

To write is to look for very particular, specific points of view on reality.

Olga Tokarczuk

Everything that was interesting was outside of Poland. Great music, art, film, hippies, Mick Jagger. It was impossible even to dream of escape. I was convinced as a teen-ager that I would have to spend the rest of my life in this trap.

Olga Tokarczuk

I'm too neurotic to be a therapist.

Olga Tokarczuk

State television, from which a significant number of Poles get their news, consistently smears, in aggressive and defamatory language, the political opposition and anyone who thinks differently from the ruling party.

Olga Tokarczuk

In a healthy, normal society, people can disagree with one another, even have diametrically opposing views, and this does not at all mean that they must hate one another. The Polish authorities, however, have made the division of Poles their primary task.

Olga Tokarczuk

I love crossing borders.

Olga Tokarczuk

We can feel in Poland a kind of phantom pain for lost multi-ethnic territories.

Olga Tokarczuk

Flights' grew out of a time when I was travelling a lot.

Olga Tokarczuk

Polish culture has always had a strong anti-Semitic undercurrent. There has been awful persecution.

Olga Tokarczuk

I first read Sigmund Freud's 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' as a young girl, and it helped me to understand that there are thousands of possible ways to interpret our experience, that everything has a meaning, and that interpretation is the key to reality. This was the first step to becoming a writer.

Olga Tokarczuk

I found Leonora Carrington's 'The Hearing Trumpet' really funny.

Olga Tokarczuk

I like to come back to the science fiction of Stanislaw Lem. He is comforting but also funny, and although I know his books, there's always something new to discover.

Olga Tokarczuk

I found that traveling on my own created a different state of mind because when you travel with your partner or a friend there is an endless tendency to exchange information, feelings and associations.

Olga Tokarczuk

My books are not 'political.' I don't make political demands. They actually describe life. But when we look at human life, politics creeps in everywhere.

Olga Tokarczuk

I write books to open people's minds, to present new perspectives, to make people realize that what they think is obvious is not so obvious, that you can look at a trivial situation from a different angle and suddenly reveal other meanings and levels.

Olga Tokarczuk

I tell stories and try to do it honestly so that people are interested and enjoy them.

Olga Tokarczuk

When we talk about books, we rarely talk about the economic side of writing, especially of writing literary works, and that, at base, it's a pretty costly enterprise.

Olga Tokarczuk

I've never been a great fan of crime fiction. I read Agatha Christie in my youth, but that's all.

Olga Tokarczuk

Sometimes I wonder how my life would have worked out if my books had been translated into English sooner, because English is the language that's spoken worldwide, and when a book appears in English it is made universal, it becomes a global publication.

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.

Olga Tokarczuk

How we think about the world and - perhaps even more importantly - how we narrate it have a massive significance, therefore, a thing that happens and is not told ceases to exist and perishes.

Olga Tokarczuk