I have never met anyone who wasn't confused inside.
Interpretation
Everyone experiences inner confusion and complexity.
This quote by Olga Tokarczuk reflects the universal nature of internal struggle and confusion that every person faces at some point in their lives. It highlights the shared human experience of grappling with one's thoughts, emotions, and identity, suggesting that no one has it completely figured out, and that this confusion is a fundamental aspect of being human.
In practice
During a motivational talk about mental health, this quote can help participants understand that confusion is a common experience.
But the fact is we did have colonies in the east of Poland, we did have a slave economy there. But this is not common knowledge - or part of our national myth. It goes against the current romanticised view of the government, and much of the country, that Poles have always been victims, never oppressors.
My books are not 'political.' I don't make political demands. They actually describe life. But when we look at human life, politics creeps in everywhere.
I think that first-person narration is very characteristic of contemporary optics, in which the individual performs the role of subjective center of the world.
The world is a fabric we weave daily on the great looms of information, discussions, films, books, gossip, little anecdotes.
I first read Sigmund Freud's 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' as a young girl, and it helped me to understand that there are thousands of possible ways to interpret our experience, that everything has a meaning, and that interpretation is the key to reality. This was the first step to becoming a writer.
Well-written novels make you more empathetic towards other people. You can identify with someone who isn't you. You can change your identity. A 14-year-old boy can become Anna Karenina. It is a miracle.
If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers.
Our wish is that...[there be] maintained that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry or that of his fathers.
Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck.
Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn't have to be a lonely kind of thing.
Not that it was beautiful, but that I found some order there.
Being alone has a power over me that never fails. My interior dissolves (for the time being only superficially) and is ready to release what lies deeper. When I am willfully alone, a slight ordering of my interior begins to take place and I need nothing more.
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