Michael

“The most important thing is spiritual labor...Books...You can wear the same suit for twenty years, two coats are enough for a lifetime, but you can't live without Pushkin or the complete works of Gorky.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Czasy secondhand. Koniec czerwonego człowieka

“Wherever you turn, you run up against your childhood and hurt yourself because it’s sharp-edged and hard, and stops only when it has torn you completely apart. It seems that everyone has their own and each is totally different. My brother’s childhood is very noisy, for example, while mine is quiet and furtive and watchful. No one likes it and no one has any use for it.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood

“Today, no one has time for feelings, they’re all out making money. The discovery of money hit us like an atom bomb…”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

“Hell is other people, said Jean-Paul Sartre. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think he means you.”
― Andy Miller, The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life