I grew up in the countryside.
Flaubert called himself a human pen; I would say that I am a human ear. When I walk down the street and catch words, phrases, and exclamations, I always think - how many novels disappear without a trace! Disappear into darkness.
I love the lone human voice. It is my greatest love and passion.
Art is always kind of snooping and listening in.
I grew up in a village after the war, and in the village, there were almost only women.
I do not remember any questions in my childhood other than questions about death and about loss, and it was clear that the books that filled the house were not as interesting as the conversations outside.
I have three homes: my Belarusian land, the homeland of my father, where I have lived my whole life; Ukraine, the homeland of my mother, where I was born; and Russia's great culture, without which I cannot imagine myself. All are very dear to me.
I'm interested in little people. 'The little, great people' is how I would put it, because suffering expands people.
We thought we'd leave communism behind, and everything would turn out fine. But it turns out you can't leave this and become free, because these people don't understand what freedom is.
I was born in a big city - Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine - but when I was a child, my father moved us back to his homeland in Minsk.
There are many oral historians in America, but my books are made using the rules of novel writing. I have a beginning, a plot, characters.
I couldn't get published for three years. Then the times changed: glasnost, perestroika. So, for three years, I wasn't allowed to publish 'The Unwomanly Face of War,' but then it changed.
I've known since I was five that I wanted to be a writer.
I am a writer who happens to use some tools of journalism.
When people talk, it matters how they place words next to each other.
Putin is not a politician. Putin is a KGB agent. And whatever he does is provocations, which KGB is usually involved in.
In the West, people demonize Putin. They do not understand that there is a collective Putin, consisting of some millions of people who do not want to be humiliated by the West. There is a little piece of Putin in everyone.
A totalitarian power is mainly busy in keeping itself alive.
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.
The subjects I wanted to write about - the mystery of the human soul, evil - didn't interest newspapers, and news reporting bored me.
