“I listen to the pain… Pain as the proof of past life. There are no other proofs, I don’t trust other proofs. Words have more than once led us away from the truth. I think of suffering as the highest form of information, having a direct connection with misery. With the misery of life. All of Russian literature is about that. It has written more about suffering than about love. All these women tell me more about it…”

Svetlana Alexievich