Chernobyl Quotes

“Is there anything more frightening than people?”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“Evil is not an actual substance. It is the absence of good, in the way that darkness is simply the absence of light.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“I make my way back whistling. Gerry nods towards Mrs Brady who is standing beside the trolleys.
Morning, Mrs Brady, I say cheerfully.
I push her provisions out to the car.
Things are something terrible, she says. You can't trust anybody.
No.
It's come to a sorry pass.
It has.
There's hormones in the beef and tranquillizers in the bacon. There's men with breasts and women with mickeys. All from eating meat.
Now.
I steer a path between a crowd of people while she keeps step alongside.
Can you believe it - they're feeding the pigs Valium. If you boil a bit of bacon you have to lie down afterwards. Dear oh dear.
Yes, I nod.
The thought of food makes me ill.
The pigs are getting depressed in those sheds. If they get depressed they lose weight. So they tranquillize them. Where will it end?
I don't know, Mrs Brady, I say. I begin filling the boot.
That's why I started buying lamb. Then along came Chernobyl. Now you can't even have lamb stew or you'll light up at night! I swear. And when they've left you with nothing safe to eat, next thing they come along and tell you you can't live in your own house.
I haven't heard of that one, Mrs Brady.
Listen to me. She took my elbow. It could all happen that you're in your own house and the next thing is there's radiation bubbling under the floorboards.
What?
It comes right at you through the foundations. Watch the yogurts. Did you hear of that?
No.
I saw it in the Champion. Did you not see it in the Champion?
I might have.
No wonder we're not right.
I brought the lid of the boot down. She sits into the car very decorously and snaps her bag open on her lap. She winds down the window and gives me 50p for myself and £1 for the trolley.”
― Dermot Healy, Sudden Times

“Everything we know of horror and dread is connected primarily with war. Stalin's Gulags and Auschwitz were recent gains for evil. History has always been the story of wars and military commanders, and war was, we could say, the yardstick of horror. This is why people muddle the concepts of war and disaster. In Chernobyl, we see all the hallmarks of war: hordes of soldiers, evacuation, abandoned houses. The course of life disrupted. Reports on Chernobyl in the newspapers are thick with the language of war: 'nuclear', 'explosion', 'heroes'. And this makes it harder to appreciate that we now find ourselves on a new page of history. The history of disasters has begun. But people do not want to reflect on that, because they have never thought about it before, preferring to take refuge in the familiar. And in the past. Even the monuments to the Chernobyl heroes look like war memorials.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“To be a scientist is to be naive, we are so focused on our search for truth we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it.”
― Jared Harris(Valery Legasov), Chernobyl(TV show)

“Sometimes I think it'd be better if you didn't write about us. Then people wouldn't be so afraid. No one talks about cancer in the home of a person who's sick with it. And if someone is in jail with a life sentence, no one mentions that, either.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“They wash the windows, the roof, the door, all of it. Then a crane drags the house from its spot and puts it down into the pit. There's dolls and books and cans all scattered around. The excavator picks them up. Then it covers everything with sand and clay, leveling it. And then instead of a village, you have an empty field. They sowed our land with corn. Our house is lying there, and our school and our village council office. My plants are there and two albums of stamps, I was hoping to bring them with me. Also I had a bike.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“The antinuclear sentiments of both leaders were soon strengthened by a man-made nuclear catastrophe that seemed to fit right in with the biblical prophecy of Armageddon that had impressed Reagan so much: 'A great star fell from the sky, flaming like a torch; and it fell on a third of the rivers and springs. The name of the star was Wormwood; and a third of the water turned to wormwood, and men in great numbers died of the water because it was poisoned' [Revelation 8:10]. The Ukrainian word for 'wormwood' is Chernobyl.”
― Michael Dobbs, Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire

“To write about that now, when only ten years have gone by. Write about it? I think it's senseless. You can't explain it, you can't understand it. We’ll still try to imagine something that looks like our own lives now. I've tried it and it doesn’t work. The Chernobyl explosion gave us the mythology of Chernobyl. The papers and magazines compete to see who can write the most frightening article. People who weren't there love to be frightened. Everyone read about mushrooms the size of human heads, but no one actually found them. So instead of writing, you should record. Document. Show me a fantasy novel about Chernobyl—there isn't one! Because reality is more fantastic.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“What is it like, radiation? Maybe they show it in the movies? Have you seen it? Is it white, or what? Some people say it has no color and no smell, and other people say that it’s black. Like earth. But if it’s colorless, then it’s like God. God is everywhere but you can’t see Him. They scare us! The apples are hanging in the garden, the leaves are on the trees, the potatoes are in the fields. I don’t think there was any Chernobyl, they made it up. They tricked people. My sister left with her husband. Not far from here, twenty kilometers. They lived there two months, and the neighbor comes running: ‘Your cow sent radiation to my cow! She’s falling down.’ ‘How’d she send it?’ 'Through the air, that’s how, like dust. It flies.’ 'Just fairy tales! Stories and more stories.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“Why are you raising such a fuss? I'll come and shut down your reactor with my ass alone.”
― Serhii Plokhy

“The word 'catastrophe' is not permitted as long as there is danger of catastrophe turning to doom.”
― Christa Wolf, Accident: A Day's News

“No one listened to us! No one listened to the scientists and the doctors. They pulled science and medicine into politics. Of course they did!”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“We came home. I took off all the clothes that I wore in there and threw them down the trash chute. I gave my hat to my little son. He really wanted it. And he wore it all the time. Two years later they gave him a diagnosis: a tumor in his brain… You can write the rest of this yourself. I don’t want to talk anymore.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station was graphic evidence, not only of how obsolete our technology was, but also of the failure of the old system. At the same time, and such is the irony of history, it severely affected our reforms by literally knocking the country off its tracks.”
― Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs

“To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for truth, we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there, whether we see it or not, whether we chose to or not.The truth doesn't care about our needs or wants. It doesn't care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask. "What is the cost of lies?”
― Valery Legasov (Chernobyl)

“—Todo lo que conocemos de los horrores y temores tiene más que ver con la
guerra. El gulag estalinista y Auschwitz son recientes adquisiciones del mal. La
historia siempre ha sido un relato de guerras y de caudillos, y la guerra constituía,
digamos, la medida del horror. Por eso, la gente confunde los conceptos de guerra y
catástrofe. En Chernóbil se diría que están presentes todos los rasgos de la guerra:
muchos soldados, evacuación, hogares abandonados… Se ha destruido el curso de la
vida. Las informaciones sobre Chernóbil están plagadas de términos bélicos: átomo,
explosión, héroes… Y esta circunstancia dificulta la comprensión de que nos
hallamos ante una nueva historia. Ha empezado la historia de las catástrofes… Pero
el hombre no quiere pensar en esto, porque nunca se ha parado a pensar en esto; se
esconde tras aquello que le resulta conocido. Tras el pasado.
Hasta los monumentos a los héroes de Chernóbil parecen militares.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“—Todo lo que conocemos de los horrores y temores tiene más que ver con la guerra. El gulag estalinista y Auschwitz son recientes adquisiciones del mal. La historia siempre ha sido un relato de guerras y de caudillos, y la guerra constituía, digamos, la medida del horror. Por eso, la gente confunde los conceptos de guerra y catástrofe. En Chernóbil se diría que están presentes todos los rasgos de la guerra: muchos soldados, evacuación, hogares abandonados… Se ha destruido el curso de la vida. Las informaciones sobre Chernóbil están plagadas de términos bélicos: átomo, explosión, héroes… Y esta circunstancia dificulta la comprensión de que nos hallamos ante una nueva historia. Ha empezado la historia de las catástrofes… Pero el hombre no quiere pensar en esto, porque nunca se ha parado a pensar en esto; se esconde tras aquello que le resulta conocido. Tras el pasado.
Hasta los monumentos a los héroes de Chernóbil parecen militares.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“Leonid Andréyev, del que ya le he hablado, tiene un relato. Un hombre que vivía en Jerusalén vio un día cómo junto a su casa conducían a Cristo. El hombre lo vio todo y lo oyó, pero entonces le dolía una muela. Ante sus ojos, Cristo cayó al suelo con la cruz a cuestas, cayó y lanzó un grito de dolor. El hombre que veía todo esto no salió de su casa a la calle porque le dolía una muela. Al cabo de dos días, cuando dejó de dolerle la muela, le contaron que Cristo había resucitado y entonces el hombre pensó: «Y yo que podía haber sido testigo del hecho, pero como me dolía la muela…».
¿Será posible que siempre ocurra igual? Los hombres nunca están a la altura de los grandes acontecimientos. Siempre les superan los hechos. Mi padre luchó en la defensa de Moscú en el 42. Pero no comprendió que había participado en un gran acontecimiento hasta pasadas decenas de años. Por los libros, las películas. Él, en cambio, recordaba: «Estaba metido en una trinchera. Disparaba. Quedé enterrado por una explosión. Los enfermeros me sacaron de allí medio vivo». Y nada más.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“Somos guerreros. Mi padre, en todo el tiempo que recuerdo, llevó ropa militar, aunque no lo era. Pensar en el dinero era de burgueses; preocuparte por tu propia vida, no patriótico. El estado normal era el hambre. Ellos, nuestros padres, sobrevivieron al desastre, por tanto también nosotros debíamos superarlo. No había otra manera de convertirse en un hombre de verdad. Nos han enseñado a luchar y a sobrevivir bajo cualquier circunstancia. A mí mismo, después del servicio militar, la vida civil me resultaba insulsa. Salíamos en grupo por la noche a la ciudad en busca de emociones fuertes.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“Eloise had been with Dad since before the riots. "As long as I breathe," Dad often said, "Eloise will have a job." She was like a second wife to him. She took care of him during his workday. They argued and fought and got grumpy with each other. There was genuine affection. Mom knew all this. "Thank God Eloise is uglier than a cow living near Chernobyl," Mom liked to say, "or I might wonder.”
― Harlan Coben, One False Move

“Challenger and Chernobyl: the only felicitous accidents, like a freeze-frame of the system. In the same way as a photo arrests movement and restores the unforgettable character that it had lost, the Challenger explosion has revived our imagination where space is concerned. The photos of Challenger were only so beautiful because they fixed in our minds the secret destination of the adventure of space travel, whereas its speed only gives us the apparent movement.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“We paid for the dormitory ourselves. For fourteen nights. It was a hospital for radiation poisoning. Fourteen nights. That’s how long it takes for person to die.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“Akla duyulan inanç insanı terk ederse, ruhuna korku yerleşir, tıpkı vahşi insanda olduğu gibi. Bu durum canavarlar üretir.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“Ve genel olarak anladım ki, hayattaki korkunç şeyler sessizce ve doğal bir şekilde gerçekleşiyor...”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“Ama sanat, hasta birinden elde edilen serum gibi, başkalarının deneyimlerini bedeninize zerk edebilir. Çernobil, tam Dostoyevski’lik bir konu. İnsanı maruz gösterme girişimi. Ya da belki, her şey son derece basittir: Dünyaya parmak uçlarında yaklaşıp tam eşikte durmak lazımdır, kimbilir?!
Bu ilahi dünyayı hayretle seyredip… O şekilde sürdürmek lazımdır yaşamı…”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“En önemli şey yaşam ve ölüm. Başka bir şey yok. Sakın bunu tartmaya çalışmayın…
Anladım ki, sadece yaşadığınız anın anlamı var… Yaşadığımız anların…”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“Oh Lyubochka, do you understand what I'm telling you, my sorrow? you'll carry it to people, maybe I won't be here anymore. I'll be in the ground. Under the roots..." Zinaida Kovalenko, Voices From Chernobyl”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“I wake up every day thinking: Is this the day the proxy wars have resulted in a nuclear catastrophe?”
― Steven Magee

“In 2019, I went on a tour of Chernobyl. The Ukrainian guide who explained what led to the nuclear accident said something that stuck in my mind. “Americans grow up with the idea that questions lead to answers,” he said. “But Soviet citizens grew up with the idea that questions lead to trouble.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI