Svetlana Alexievich Quotes

We were born and we die. In between, I think we try to live as best we can.

We all have a cradle-to-the-grave journey to make and, in between, what do you do? There's got to be something hereafter.

The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

Sometimes it takes a brush with eternity - a crash, an illness, some shock to the system - to get you really thinking about what you want to do with your limited time here, and why you're living on this wobbling dirt clod in the first place.

What's the point of our life? Everything seems absurd until we die, and then it makes sense.

We all die at the end, but does that nullify everything? Would most people rather say, "I wish I hadn't been born?" Once you're born you'll have to die, now is that funny or sad?

I finally did not understand if we are living to survive or we are living to die!

One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.

The second Cocoon questions that and deals much more directly with the value of living in the real world with its trials and tribulations. I would say it's about that and not about aging or death.

There are only three events in a man's life; birth, life, and death; he is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.

You don't waste your entire life waiting to go back to dust.

Well, I think the main message is there is more to your story. There is more than what happens between the crib and the grave, and that is what I am really trying to speak to, this idea that all of life is this life and that there is nothing more than what we see and experience right here on this earth.

It is only in the light of the inescapable fact of death that a person can adequately engage and enter upon the mysterious fact of life.

I am really curious about life, about why we are all here. I notice my skin is ageing, things are changing, I've seen people dying, so that's the train we are all on.

The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.

The immense majority of human biographies are a gray transit between domestic spasm and oblivion.

I have never been able, really, to figure out where my life begins and where it ends. I have never, never been able to figure it all out, what it's all about, what it all means.

At the heart of life lies a mystery that everybody has to wrestle with. What the heck are we doing here? How does this world work, and how do I fit?

You must realize that one day you will die. Until then you are worthless.

I love the idea of a very simple 8-bit video game character struggling with the complex question: 'isn't there more to life than the role I've been assigned?'

When I'm sitting around, I'm thinking about how I can make my next professional career move, but more than anything, I'm thinking about the meaning of life and how fleeting it is.

Life is short, and therefore, one thing being certain, death, let us take up a great ideal, and give up the whole life to it. For what is the value of life, this vegetating little low life of man? Subordinating it to one high ideal is the only value that life has.