I had never seen war, or even talked about it at length with someone who had, but I was young and knew something of violence, and so believed that war would be no more than a new experience for me, as other things… had been new experiences. War is not a new experience; it is a new world… Even its geography is new, because it is a geography in which insignificant hills and hollows are lifted to the importance of cities.
“It is tacitly assumed that people don’t know themselves, but that if you furnish them with questions that are smart enough, they’ll be able to figure themselves out. They pose themselves a question, and they give themselves an answer. And they’ll inadvertently reveal to themselves that secret that they knew nothing of till now. And there is that other assumption, which is terribly dangerous — that we are constant, and that our reactions can be predicted.”
Olga Tokarczuk | Flights