In apartments and cottages, on the street and in the train... I listen... More and more, I turn into one large ear, always turning to another person.
The subjects I wanted to write about - the mystery of the human soul, evil - didn't interest newspapers, and news reporting bored me.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a disconnect between deeper human experiences and superficial news reporting.
In this quote, Svetlana Alexievich expresses her frustration with traditional journalism, highlighting that the profound themes of the human soul and the nature of evil hold more importance for her than the mundane stories often covered by newspapers. This suggests a yearning for deeper understanding and exploration of what it means to be human, rather than merely reporting the everyday events that may lack significant emotional or philosophical weight.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a literature class discussing the deep themes of writing, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of exploring profound human experiences.
More from Svetlana Alexievich
All quotes β'Women's' war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. There are no heroes and incredible feats; there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things.
There is no need to give in to the compromise that totalitarian regimes always count on.
I've been searching for a genre that would be most adequate to my vision of the world to convey how my ear hears and my eyes see life. I tried this and that, and finally, I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves. But I don't just record a dry history of events and facts; I'm writing a history of human feelings.
From the point of view of art, the butcher and the victim are equal as people. You need to see the people.
Nothing, not even human life, is more precious to us than our myths about ourselves.
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Answer the big question of eternity, and the little questions of life fall into perspective.
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It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends 500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only 53 annually on the victims of poverty.
I direct my attention to the individual, to make him strong, to teach him that he himself is divine, and I call upon men to make themselves conscious of this divinity within. That is really the ideal --conscious or unconscious --of every religion.