Helen

“Winter mornings are made of steel; they have a metallic taste and sharp edges. On a Wednesday in January, at seven in the morning, it’s plain to see that the world was not made for Man, and definitely not for his comfort or pleasure.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“You know what, sometimes it seems to me we're living in a world that we 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 problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“One of the prizes of old age is its release from competition.”
― Jan Morris, Allegorizings

“Newspapers rely on keeping us in a constant state of anxiety, on diverting our emotions away from the things that really matter to us. Why should I yield to their power and let them tell me what to think?”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead