#drive your plow over the bones of the dead

[quotespile]

That’s what I dislike most of all in people – cold irony. It’s a very cowardly attitude to mock or belittle everything, never be committed to anything, not feel tied to anything. Like an impotent man who can’t experience pleasure himself, but will do all he can to ruin it for others.

Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

[forthegothicheroine]

I knew what books she liked, because she put them on a shelf and lent them to her customers- gloomy horror stories, Gothic novels with crumpled covers featuring a drawing of a Bat. Perverted monks, severed hands that murder people, coffins flushed out of graveyards by a flood. Evidently reading this sort of thing confirmed in her the conviction that we are not living in the worst of worlds, and taught her optimism.

Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

[luthienne]

It is at Dusk that the most interesting things occur, for that is when simple differences fade away. I could live in everlasting Dusk.

Olga Tokarczuk, from Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (tr. from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)

[ahaura]

Olga Tokarczuk Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead tr. Antonia Lloyd-Jones

[catmint1]

Winter mornings are made of steel; they have a metallic taste and sharp edges. On a Wednesday in January, at seven in the morning, it’s plain to see that the world was not made for Man, and definitely not for his comfort or pleasure.

Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

[litsnaps]

[fckypym]

The human psyche evolved in order to defend itself against seeing the truth. To prevent us from catching sight of the mechanism. The psyche is our defense system - it makes sure we'll never understand what's going on around us. Its main task is to filter information, even though the capabilities of our brains are enormous. For it would be impossible for us to carry the weight of this knowledge. Because every tiny particle of the world is made of suffering.

Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

[cinematic-literature]

La vox humana (2020) by Pedro Almodóvar

Book title

Sobre los huesos de los muertos (Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych in Polish; 2009) by Olga Tokarczuk

Welcome Home: A Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters (2018) by Lucia Berlin 

Music for Chameleons (1980) by Truman Capote

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) by Truman Capote

Las hijas de otros hombres (Other Men's Daughters in English; 1973) by Richard G. Stern

Too Much Happiness (2009) by Alice Munro

Girl (2019) by Edna O’Brien

Tender is the Night (1934) by Francis Scott Fitzgerald 

A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

[moonagedaydreamsofrhiannon]

If Remus Lupin was still alive his favorite book would 100% be Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk and if you disagree you’re wrong

[quotespile]

Other people's life stories are not a topic for debate. One should hear them out, and reciprocate in the same coin.

Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

[priscaren]

Janina Duszejko:

[traitofsleep]

possibly my favorite passage i read in 2023

[ahaura]

Olga Tokarczuk Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead tr. Antonia Lloyd-Jones

[litsnaps]