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“Fear is more human than bravery, you’re scared and you’re sorry, at least for yourself, but you force your fear back into your subconscious.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“الرجال يقاتلون في الحرب، أما النساء فبعدها”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“الضمير هو ترف بالنسبة الى جندي”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“Well, I admit it. I had the greatest respect for the Afghan people, even while I was shooting and killing them. I still do. You could even say I love them. I like their songs and prayers, as peaceful and timeless as their mountains.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“We were told that this was a just war, that we were helping the Afghan people to put an end to feudalism and build a wonderful socialist society.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“ان ماينقذ الإنسان في الحرب هو تشتت وتبدد وعيه”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“Dreptul omului de a nu ucide. De a nu învața să ucidă. Neînscris în nicio constituție.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“Life was full of adventure: I learnt the smell of danger �� I’ve got a sixth sense for it now. We’re homesick for it, some of us; it’s called the ‘Afghan syndrome��.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“A soldier must be like a bullet, constantly ready to be fired.�� I learnt that by heart. You go to war in order to kill. Killing is my profession �� that’s what I was trained to do.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“We don’t need anything. Just listen to us and try to understand. Society is good at doing things, ‘giving�� medical help, pensions, flats. But all this so-called giving has been paid for in very expensive currency. Our blood.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“still remember the way a twenty-year-old shouted, ‘I don’t want to hear about any political mistakes! I just don’t want to! Give me my two legs back if it was all a mistake.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“I accepted the official line so completely that even now, after all I’ve read and heard, I still have a minute hope that our lives weren’t entirely wasted. It’s the self-preservation instinct at work.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“Yur Karyakin once wrote: ‘We should not judge a man’s life by his perception of himself. Such a perception may be tragically inadequate.�� And I read something in Kafka to the effect that man was irretrievably lost within himself.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“There’s not much humanity in a human being �� that’s what war taught me.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“I spend most of my time crying and praying for that bookish Moscow girl who doesn't exist any more.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“All of us who were there have a graveyard full of memories.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“Nu trebuie să inventez nimic. Pretutindeni în jur sunt fragmente de cărți esențiale. În fiecare om.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“A te gândi la moarte e ca și cum te-ai gândi la viitor. Atunci când te gândești la ea și când o vezi, se petrece ceva cu timpul. Pe lângă teama de moarte există și atracția ei...”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“We’re all suffering from a wasting disease, you know. Over there it showed itself as a mismatch between our weight and our height, but here, back home, it’s a mismatch between our feelings and our ability to express them in what we say and do.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“They were told they were on a holy mission and that their country would remember them. Now people turn away and try to forget the war, especially those who sent us there in the first place.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“Coming home was terribly difficult and very strange. I felt I’d had my skin ripped off. I couldn’t stop crying, I could bear to be only with people who’d been there themselves.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“That first March a pile grew up behind the hospital �� a pile of amputated arms, legs and other bits of our men. Dead bodies with gouged-out eyes, and stars carved into the skin of their backs and stomachs by the mujahedin.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“It's three years since my son died and I haven't dreamt about him once. I go to sleep with with his vest and trousers under my pillow. 'Come to me in my dreams, Sasha. Come and see me!'
But he never does. I wonder what I've done to offend him.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“I guess that's how you experience your own death, from a distance”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“Fear is more human than bravery, you're scared and you're sorry, at least for yourself, but you force your fear back into your subconscious. And you try not to think that you may end up lying here, thousands of miles from home. There are men flying around in space but down here we go on killing each other as we have done for a thousand years, with bullets, knives and stones.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“Not long ago I had a few teeth pulled, one after the other, and in my pain and shock I began to talk. The dentist, a woman, looked at me almost in disgust: "A mouth full of blood, and he wants to talk . . ." At that moment I realized I would never be able to talk honestly about anything again. Everyone thinks of us like that: mouths full of blood, and we want to talk”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“الحقيقة رهيبة جداً، ولن تكون هناك حقيقة، ولا يحتاجها أحد. لا أنتم الذين بقيتم هنا، ولا نحن الذين كنا هناك......”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“سيقتلونك هناك ليس من أجل الوطن ، سيقتلونك لسبب مجهول ..
هكذا بلا سبب، هل يمكن ان يرسل الوطن خيرة أبنائه إلى الهلاك بلا فكرة عظيمة ؟”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“Why is it that seventeenand eighteen-year-olds find it easier to kill than thirty-year-olds, for example? Because they have no pity, that’s why.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“After I got back I couldn’t bear to wear my ‘pre-war�� jeans and shirts. They belonged to some stranger, although they still smelt of me, as my mother assured me. That stranger no longer exists.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War