In my opinion, the right to rebellion, to rage, is very important in any person’s psychological development. If you grow and live without the opportu… - Olga Tokarczuk

Literature is one of the few spheres that try to keep us close to the hard facts of the world, because by its very nature it is always psychological, because it focuses on the internal reasoning and motives of the characters, reveals their otherwise inaccessible experience to another person, or simply provokes the reader into a psychological interpretation of their conduct. Only literature is capable of letting us go deep into the life of another being, understand their reasons, share their emotions and experience their fate.

Tenderness is the most modest form of love. It is the kind of love that does not appear in the scriptures or the gospels, no one swears by it, no one cites it. It has no special emblems or symbols, nor does it lead to crime, or prompt envy.

I started to think more about just jumping from one point to the other. It’s like opening the windows on your computer, you have so many spaces. Or it’s like turning on your television–there’s another metaphor–you can jump from one channel to another. And that was the effect, the outcome of my thinking about the novel. Of course it was shocking for some readers. But I think that I was right.