Please find below a few of the mind-numbing, heart-wrenching statements I found in Chapter 1 of "Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster" by Svetlana Alexievich.
The scientist:
"I thought the worst was behind me, the war years, and that now I was safe."
The father:
"I want to testify: my daughter died from Chernobyl. But they want us to keep quiet."
The returnees:
"My good husband liked to say man pulls the trigger, but God carries the bullet."
"You just need to live. That's all."
"Two Chernobyl women are chatting. One says, `Have you heard, everyone's got the white blood cancer now?' The other says, `Rubbish! Yesterday I cut my finger and the blood was red.'"
"Laugh and the world laughs with you. There's a Ukrainian woman selling big red apples at the market. She was touting her wares: `Come and get them! Apples from Chernobyl!' Someone told her, `Don't advertise the fact that they're from Chernobyl, love. No one will buy them.' `Don't you believe it! They're selling well! People buy them for their mother-in-law or their boss!"
"As they say, the place where you were born is where you belong."
"...this is an act of betrayal."
"Your children only bring you joy while they are little."
"Why did that Chernobyl blow up? Some say it's the scientists to blame. Trying to catch God by the beard, and He has the last laugh. And it's us that suffer!"
"It has been two years since we stopped drifting about those strange places and came back home."
"Find Anna Sushko for us...She's got a hump, been mute since childhood...The whole village cared about her."
The refugees:
"And the bandits asked us: `Is it Kulobi or Pamiri?'"
"Who would I give birth to, with my soul dead?"
"One life is over, and I don't have the strength for another one."
"The Ukranian word for `wormwood' is Chernobyl."
"Man is crafty only in evil, but he's so simple and open in his plain words of love."
The Soldier's Choir:
"We got home. I took everything off, all the stuff I'd been wearing...I gave the cap to my little son, as a present. He kept asking for it. He wore it non-stop. Two years later, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour." [the ignorance among the liquidators on the danger of radiation]
"When I got back from Afghanistan, I knew I'd live. After Chernobyl, the opposite was true."
"The doctor wouldn't touch a thing." [lack of transparency]
"You're a Chernobyl guy now. Who'd want to marry you?"
"As we said, battling the atom with spades! In the twentieth century."
"Then, of course, they got us to sign some form. A non-disclosure agreement."
"Out there, death was an everyday reality. It was no mystery." [Chernobyl vs. Afghanistan]
"After my nine operations and two hearts attacks, I don't judge anyone any more."
"A job for real men!" [heroic urge, sense of adventure]
"But it was clear their [robots'] insides has been fried by the high doses of radiation."
