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Quote by Svetlana Alexievich

“I want to make a film, to see everything through the eyes of an animal. "What are you shooting?" people say to me. "Look around you. There's a war on in Chechnya." But Saint Francis preached to the birds. He spoke to them as equals. What if these birds spoke to him in their bird language, and it wasn't he who condescended to them?”

Quote by Svetlana Alexievich

Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

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Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

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Svetlana Alexievich

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“His friend proposed to me. He'd been in love with me long ago, back when we were in school. Then he married my friend, and then they got divorced. "You'll live like a queen." He owns a store, has a huge apartment in the city, he had a dacha. I thought and thought about it. Then one day he came in drunk: "You're not going to forget your hero, is that it?" He went to Chernobyl, and I refused. I'm alive, and he's a memorial.”

Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Source: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“We're afraid of everything. We're afraid for our children, and for our grandchildren, who don't exist yet. They don't exist, and we're already afraid. People smile less, they sing less at holidays. The landscape changes, because instead of fields the forest rises up again, but the national character changes too. Everyone's depressed. It's a feeling of doom. Chernobyl is a metaphor, a symbol. And it's changed our everyday life, and our thinking.”

Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Source: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“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.”

Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Source: 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.”

Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Source: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“Spomenik herojima Černobilja... To je rukotvoreni sarkofag, u koji su pohranili nuklearni plamen. Piramida dvadesetog veka.”

Chernobyl Wormwood

Author:Svetlana Aleksijevič

“Life is not a competition, but a path of grace. Hasten not the quiet hours, for in them the heart finds peace.”

Life Inspirational Inspiration Motivational Motivation Peace Grace Positive

Book:The Light in the Heart

Source: The Light in the Heart

“We started thinking about it -- I guess it must have been -- three years later. One of the guys got sick, then another. Someone died. Another went insane and killed himself. That's when we started thinking. But we'll only really understand in about 20-30 years. For me, Afghanistan (I was there two years) and then Chernobyl (I was there three months), are the most memorable moments of my life.”

Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Source: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“I was in Afghanistan too. It was easier there. They just shot you.”

Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Source: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“We're lonely. We're strangers here. They even bury us separately, not like they do other people. It's like we're aliens from outer space. I'd have been better off dying in Afghanistan. Honest, I get thoughts like that. In Afghanistan death was a normal thing. You could understand it there.”

Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Source: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“Victory is not an event for us, but a process. Life is a struggle. An overcoming. That's why we have this love of floods and fires and other catastrophes. We need an opportunity to demonstrate our "courage and heroism.”

Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Source: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster