Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

by Olga Tokarczuk

What a joy it is in life when you happen to have a clean, warm kitchen. It has never happened to me. I have never been good at keeping order around me. Too bad—I’m reconciled to it by now.

Sometimes it’s as if I’m composed of nothing but symptoms of illness, I am a phantom built out of pain.

Being healthy is an insecure state and does not bode well. It’s better to be ill in a quiet way, then at least we know what we’re going to die of.