So much truth in the words from the banquet speech of the 2015 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature, Svetlana Alexievich.

“Why do I write? I have been called a writer of catastrophes, but that isn’t true. I am always looking for words of love. Hate will not save us. Only love. And I have hope.

… In one Belarusian village, an old woman bade me farewell with the following words: “Soon we will go our separate ways. Thank you for listening to me and for conveying my pain to other people. I beg you, as you leave, to have a look at my little cabin not only once, but twice. When a person looks a second time, it is not with the eye of a stranger, it is a look with the heart …”

(Excerpts are from Svetlana Alexievich’s banquet speech during the Nobel Prize Banquet on December 10, 2015)

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