Michael

“The most important thing is spiritual labor...Books...You can wear the same suit for twenty years, two coats are enough for a lifetime, but you can't live without Pushkin or the complete works of Gorky.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Czasy secondhand. Koniec czerwonego człowieka

“I think I have the courage to doubt everything; I think I have the courage to fight everything. But I do not have the courage to know anything, nor to possess, to own anything. Most people complain that the world is so prosaic, that life isn't like a romantic novel where opportunities are always so favourable. What I complain of is that life is not like a novel where there are hard-hearted fathers, and goblins and trolls to fight with, enchanted princesses to free. What are all such enemies taken together compared to the pallid, bloodless, glutinous nocturnal shapes with which I fight and to which I myself give life and being.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

“Russia is lost" she continued. "First we had God. Then we had Lenin. Now we have nothing.”
― Guillermo Erades, Back to Moscow

“Today, no one has time for feelings, they’re all out making money. The discovery of money hit us like an atom bomb…”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets