Olga Tokarczuk Quotes

Olga Tokarczuk

Profession : Writer

Birth : January 29, 1962

Reality is like a doughnut: Everything that is good and funny and juicy is outside the center, which is just emptiness.

Olga Tokarczuk

I think the deepest level of our freedom is being able to change our identity.

Olga Tokarczuk

I try to do my job and be a decent person, and a decent person has the courage to face what is not necessarily pleasant, what is perhaps dark and troublesome.

Olga Tokarczuk

Seeing everything means recognizing the ultimate fact that all things that exist are mutually connected into a single whole, even if the connections between them are not yet known to us.

Olga Tokarczuk

I believe in literature which ties people together, that highlights what people have in common, despite the differences - color, sexual orientation, or anything which may separate us on the surface.

Olga Tokarczuk

I believe in a kind of literature which makes clear that, at a deeper level, below the surface, we are tied together through invisible but existing threads. A kind of literature which talks about a lively, ever-changing world of unity, of which we are a small, but not insignificant part.

Olga Tokarczuk

There is no official censorship in literature, but I feel a certain fear when I see that a kind of self-censorship is developing in Poland. Authors are somehow afraid of expressing what they really think or feel because they fear political consequences.

Olga Tokarczuk

I love crossing borders.

Olga Tokarczuk

I found that traveling on my own created a different state of mind because when you travel with your partner or a friend there is an endless tendency to exchange information, feelings and associations.

Olga Tokarczuk

Poland was once a powerful imperial country that disappeared from maps of Europe for more than 100 years. It was partitioned and occupied by the Nazis and the Russians... We pop up and disappear and we do not trust what we are told to believe.

Olga Tokarczuk

I adore Stanley Kubrick, all of his films were different, not just in subject but tonally.

Olga Tokarczuk

I like to come back to the science fiction of Stanislaw Lem. He is comforting but also funny, and although I know his books, there's always something new to discover.

Olga Tokarczuk

Education, school should prepare us not to morally judge everyone, but to be able to find our own truth in this world of various points of view.

Olga Tokarczuk

I'm not one of those people who easily judges something or someone.

Olga Tokarczuk

I would like to say to my friends in Poland: Let's make good choices, vote for democracy.

Olga Tokarczuk

I write books to open people's minds, to present new perspectives, to make people realize that what they think is obvious is not so obvious, that you can look at a trivial situation from a different angle and suddenly reveal other meanings and levels.

Olga Tokarczuk

Polish literature can be interesting to the world. I'm happy to be the trailblazer.

Olga Tokarczuk

I have never met anyone who wasn't confused inside.

Olga Tokarczuk

In a certain sense we can be proud to have introduced this hairstyle to Europe. 'Plica polonica' should be added to the list of our inventions, alongside crude oil, pierogi and vodka.

Olga Tokarczuk

Flights' grew out of a time when I was travelling a lot.

Olga Tokarczuk