In today's world everything is political. We are a statement - our clothes, haircut, the way we act.
Olga Tokarczuk
Reality is like a doughnut: Everything that is good and funny and juicy is outside the center, which is just emptiness.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
Novels can change attitudes. Maybe we should speak quietly otherwise politicians will use novels as propaganda.
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.
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.
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.
I got my first passport in 1989, when I was 28.
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.
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.
I think the deepest level of our freedom is being able to change our identity.
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.
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.
The world is a fabric we weave daily on the great looms of information, discussions, films, books, gossip, little anecdotes.
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.
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.
It's impossible to be ethnically pure.
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.
I believe absolutely that words must be treated as material weapons, every invective or threat as violence and aggression.
Reading English novels I always adore the ability to write without fear about inner psychological things that are so delicate.
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.
I didn't believe that the Soviet Union would ever break down.
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.
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.
When I was a teenager I fell in love with TS Eliot.
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.
To write is to look for very particular, specific points of view on reality.
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.
I'm too neurotic to be a therapist.
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.
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.
I love crossing borders.
We can feel in Poland a kind of phantom pain for lost multi-ethnic territories.
Flights' grew out of a time when I was travelling a lot.
Polish culture has always had a strong anti-Semitic undercurrent. There has been awful persecution.
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.
I found Leonora Carrington's 'The Hearing Trumpet' really funny.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I tell stories and try to do it honestly so that people are interested and enjoy them.
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.
I've never been a great fan of crime fiction. I read Agatha Christie in my youth, but that's all.
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.
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.
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.
