Jordan

“Today, people just want to live their lives, they don’t need some great Idea. This is entirely new for Russia; it’s unprecedented in Russian literature. At heart, we’re built for war. We were always either fighting or preparing to fight. We’ve never known anything else—hence our wartime psychology. Even in civilian life, everything was always militarized. The drums were beating, the banners flying, our hearts leaping out of our chests. People didn’t recognize their own slavery—they even liked being slaves.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

“The first thing to go was friendship…Suddenly, everyone was too busy, they had to go out and make money.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

“History is concerned solely with the facts; emotions are outside of its realm of interest. In fact, it’s considered improper to admit feelings into history. But I look at the world as a writer and not a historian. I am fascinated by people.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy