Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

by Olga Tokarczuk

In fact I only watch the weather channel. Since finding it, I’m happy to say I have everything I need, and I have no idea where the remote control has gone.

Or perhaps her spine was ruined by writing.

If I hadn’t known her so well, I’m sure I would have read her books. But as I did know her, I was afraid to open them. What if I found myself described in them in a way that I couldn’t fathom? Or my favorite places, which for her are something completely different from what they are to me?

I didn’t like poetry; all the poems ever written seemed to me unnecessarily complicated and unclear. I couldn’t understand why these revelations weren’t recorded properly—in prose.

We have this body of ours, a troublesome piece of luggage, we don’t really know anything about it and we need all sorts of Tools to find out about its most natural processes.

The only coarse and primitive Tool gifted us for consolation is pain.

My Ailments were destroying my body, gradually, relentlessly. Each year my knees ached more, and my liver was clearly no longer fit for purpose.

Sorrow, I felt great sorrow, an endless sense of mourning for every dead Animal. One period of grief is followed by another, so I am in constant mourning. This is my natural state.

I feel just as sorry for both. But nobody shoots at defenseless people,” I told the City Guard that same evening. “At least not these days,” I added. “True. We’re a law-abiding country,” confirmed the guard. He seemed good-natured and not very bright. “Its Animals show the truth about a country,” I said. “Its attitude toward Animals. If people behave brutally toward Animals, no form of democracy is ever going to help them, in fact nothing will at all.”

“I wish I knew Animal script,” I said, “signs in which I could write warnings for them: ‘Don’t go over there,’ ‘That food is lethal,’ ‘Keep away from the pulpits, they won’t preach the gospel to you from there, you won’t hear any good news over there, they won’t promise you salvation after death, they won’t take pity on your poor souls,

The whole, complex human psyche has evolved to prevent Man from understanding what he is really seeing. To stop the truth from reaching him by wrapping it in illusion, in idle chatter. The world is a prison full of suffering, so constructed that in order to survive one must inflict pain on others.

I had never heard one woman referring to another as “my wife” before. But I liked it. “You’re surprised, aren’t you?” I thought for a while. “I could have a wife too,” I said with conviction. “It’s better to live with someone than alone. It’s easier to go through life together than on one’s own.”

someone who overuses the phrase “in truth” is sure to be a liar.

intellectual limitation and human cruelty know no bounds.

all the energy drained out of me. He wasn’t taking me seriously. If I were Boros, or Black Coat, perhaps he’d have heard me out, considered his arguments and debated the matter. But to him I was just an old woman,

“Is there really such a big difference between a Hare, a Dog and a Pig?” I asked, but she didn’t answer.

Oh well, I’m used to doing difficult things on my own.

The citizen whom the public services ignore is in a way condemned to nonexistence. Yet it would be a mistake to forget that he who has no rights is not bound by any duties.

I wondered whether the stars can see us. And if they can, what might they think of us? Do they really know our future? Do they feel sorry for us?

How can God be listening to all the prayers in the entire world simultaneously? And what if they contradict each other? Does he have to listen to the prayers of all these bastards, devils and bad people?

Early in January, when I was still plunged in the blackest despair because of my Little Girls,

“I understand your pain,” he said after a pause. “But they were just animals.” “They were my only loved ones. My family. My daughters.”

Newspapers rely on keeping us in a constant state of anxiety, on diverting our emotions away from the things that really matter to us. Why should I yield to their power and let them tell me what to think?