Quotes from Andrzej Stasiuk

Travel is no more than a relatively healthy form of narcotic, after all.

Sometimes I get up before sunrise to watch the way the dark thins out and objects slowly reveal themselves, the trees, the rest of the landscape. You can hear the river below and roosters in the village. The light of dawn, cold and blue, gradually fills the world, and it's the same in every place I've been.

I lack the imagination. For that reason I have to pack, stuff into my pockets odds and ends, passport, money, and go see what it's really like. Whenever the time of year or the weather changes, I have to pack up whatever I can't do without and visit all those places I've been before, to make sure they still exist

it is the West's provincialism, which leads it to perceive the rest of the continent as a failed copy of itself

It drew us, because life is made of bits of the present that stay in the mind. The world itself, really, is made of that.

In the slanting light of late autumn, the gestures and bodies of people are more expressive the less meaning they have. Men stand on street corners staring at the emptiness of the day. They spit on the sidewalk and smoke cigarettes. That's the present. ...Time, approaching from afar, is like the air that someone else has already breathed.

The future is fiction. It will come, of course, we hear about it all the time, but the old wisdom knows that only what is, and what was, exists. The rest does not, because no one ever saw it or touched it.

Now it all seems so simple. Events intersect free of any logic of sequence; they cover space and time in an even, translucent layer. Memory re-creates them from the back, from the front, or sideways, but to them it makes no difference.

Sometimes it seems to me that things hold together only thanks to the borders, that the true identify of these lands and peoples is the shape of their territories in an atlas. It's a stupid thought, but I can't shake it.

Taki jest sens literatury, ?eby ci? wykolei?a z normalnej codzienno?ci, ?eby ci? wystrzeli?a w kosmos z tego zwyk?ego ?ycia, ?eby? si? nie da? udupi?. ?eby? nie s?ucha? rodziców, tylko ?eby? s?ucha? Martina Edena, bo jednak, z ca?ym szacunkiem dla rodziców, oferta, jak? on sk?ada, jest ciekawsza.

it gives me no rest, my wish to know the fate of all these scenes that entered my eyes and have remained in my thoughts. What happens to them when I am no longer there?

Freedom has become a commodity whose availability, paradoxically, keeps society in check. The threat of its loss seems to enable us to tolerate its imposition.

That's why I drove there in the middle of February, patches of snow still on the fields. I had the strong feeling that somewhere between Sluejow, Wygwizdow, and Solec time had ground to a halt or simply evaporated or melted like a dream and no longer separated us from our childhood.

Sometimes I imagine a map composed only of the places I'd like to see once more.

Reszt? pami?tam s?abo i zarazem wyra?nie.

?ycie albo ?mier?, chcecie zdycha?, to zdychajcie.

O czwartej nad ranem noc powoli unosi czarny ty?ek, jakby ob?arta wstawa?a od sto?u i sz?a spa?. Powietrze jest jak zimny atrament, sp?ywa asfaltowymi drogami, rozlewa si? i krzepnie w czarne jeziora.

Próbuj? wyobrazi? sobie ?wiat przed fotografi? i nie potrafi?. Prawdopodobnie w ogóle nie istnia?, nieustannie przepada?,poch?oni?ty przez ruchliwe, nienasycone zmys?y, nic z niego nie zostawa?o.

Po tym poznaje si? wielkich pisarzy, ?e wchodz? w twoj? pami?? bez ?ladu, jak cienka ig?a, ale ju? nigdy si? od nich nie uwolnisz.

Ciemno?? i czas - lekkie, niewidzialne substancje, które obna?aj? ludzk? krucho??. Umys? jest tylko p?omykiem zapa?ki na wietrze. Dusza ze strachu przed mrokiem wtula si? w cia?o, a ono swoje istnienie stwierdza dotykaj?c w?asnej skóry.

To zabawne, ?e próbuj?c upora? si? z czasem, zazwyczaj wracamy do minionego, do tego, co ukszta?towane, do gotowej formy. Wyobra?nia nie potrafi niczego wymy?li?. Zawieszona w pró?ni spada jak kamie? albo zajmuje si? sob?, co koniec ko?ców wychodzi na jedno.

Overgrown, crumbling, tilted, full of cracks, returning to the soil. Paint fell from boards, plaster from walls. Unsupervised, matter was collapsing under its own weight.

Ludzie nie pragn? ?eczy wymy?lonych, poci?ga ich tylko to, co zobaczyli wcze?niej.

Wychodzi?o na to, ?e zbrodnia w afekcie. Innych wtedy nie by?o. Nie to, co teraz. My zasadniczo nie pope?niali?my powa?nych przest?pstw. A ju? na pewno nie z ch?ci zysku. Do g?owy nam by nie przysz?o, ?e mo?emy splami? si? jakim? zyskiem. Interesowa?a nas strata. Ostatnie takie pokolenie.