To make it easier for us to cope with this we are given numbers, name tags, cards, crude plastic identities that try to reduce us to using one small … - Olga Tokarczuk

In a way, we need charismatic leaders. I mean, situation in Poland, so many peoples, 38 million is waiting for charismatic leader who will have a position to recognize what is good and what is bad and just to lead us somewhere to the better times. But for the other side, I don't know, really.

I’m afraid nobody nowadays has the courage to speak about what’s going to happen. Predictions never come true. We live in a world of fear of the future. Astrological thinking is based on thinking in cycles. It’s the same in economics. To my mind, the most interesting are the long cycles, which take a few centuries, revealing certain historical truths that aren’t seen when one is reading the world ad hoc through the media. Astrology is an ancient art invented a few thousand years ago, which miraculously continues. A human projects some order on the planetary setting, then their perception of the world is refracted and returned with totally different knowledge. This is fascinating. I had always been interested in astrology, but only had basic knowledge about it. the imagination. Sometimes I regret that contemporary people distance themselves so much from such old, beautiful ways for pondering reality.

I wrote a lot of short stories. I’m still interested in this form and I collect ideas for stories on an ongoing basis, even though I’ve recently developed as a novelist. But my fascination with storytelling doesn’t end. I believe it is a highly sublime, very difficult literary form. Few writers can write a good short story. Sometimes I think it’s easier to write a novel than a short story with a good solid ending. I appreciate this form very much as a reader, too; I’ve loved collections, anthologies of stories since I was a child.