Quotes from Olga Tokarczuk

You Know what, sometimes it seems to me we've living in a world that fabricate for ourselves. We decide what's good and what isn't, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves...And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problems is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other

I often crossed it inadvertently when out that way on my daily rounds. But I also liked to cross it on purpose, deliberately stepping to and fro. A dozen times, or several dozen times. I'd amuse myself like that for half an hour—playing the game of crossing the border. It gave me pleasure, because I could remember the time when it wasn't possible. I love crossing borders.

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

God gave animals a lower rank, in the service of man.

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.

With age, many men come down with testosterone autism, the symptoms of which are a gradual decline in social intelligence and capacity for interpersonal communication, as well as a reduced ability to formulate thoughts.

Reality has grown old and gone senile; after all, it is definitely subject to the same laws as every living organism—it ages.

Clearly I did not inherit whatever gene it is that makes it so that when you linger in a place you start to put down roots.

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

We live in a state of siege. If one takes a close look at each fragment of a moment, one might choke with terror. Within our bodies disintegration inexorably advances; soon we shall fall sick and die. Our loved ones will leave us, the memory of them will dissolve in the tumult; nothing will remain. Just a few clothes in the wardrobe and someone in a photograph, no longer recognized. The most precious memories will dissipate. Everything will sink into darkness and vanish.

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

I have never met anyone who wasn't confused inside.