I'm interested in love and in death. Everything evolves from

“I’m interested in love and in death. Everything evolves from these things.” — so spoke Svetlana Alexievich, the chronicler of human hearts amidst the ruins of war, whose pen captured not the clash of armies, but the trembling of souls. In her words lies a wisdom as old as time, for love and death are the twin pillars upon which all of life is built. From the cradle to the grave, every joy, every sorrow, every act of creation and destruction springs from these two eternal forces. To understand them is to understand the mystery of being itself.

For Alexievich, love is not a fleeting sentiment, but the fire that binds humanity together — the pulse that beats even in the darkest night. And death, its solemn twin, is not merely an end, but the silence that gives meaning to every sound, the shadow that defines the light. In her works — forged from the testimonies of soldiers, mothers, and survivors — she listened to how love endures in the face of death, and how death reshapes love into memory, longing, or loss. Her fascination is not with romance or tragedy, but with the very essence of existence, the delicate balance between tenderness and mortality.

The ancients, too, spoke of these twin mysteries. The Greeks called love Eros — the divine longing that drives gods and mortals alike — and death Thanatos, the inevitable stillness that follows the storm. They understood that the two are forever intertwined: where there is love, there is fear of loss; and where there is death, there lingers the memory of love. Thus, all art, all philosophy, all faith arises from this tension. The poet writes to preserve what time will erase. The soldier fights to protect what he loves, even at the cost of his own life. Every act of creation is an act of defiance against the grave.

Consider the story of Vasily Grossman, a writer who chronicled the Siege of Stalingrad. Amid the horrors of war, he wrote not of victory, but of compassion — of a soldier sharing his last piece of bread, of a mother searching for her lost child. In those moments, he found that even in the shadow of death, the flame of love burned brighter, stubborn and unyielding. “Life,” he wrote, “is not only the struggle for survival, but the ability to feel another’s pain.” Alexievich’s quote springs from the same realization: that human history is not written by the victors or the rulers, but by the countless hearts that loved and suffered beneath them.

Love and death are the great equalizers — indifferent to rank, wealth, or creed. The king and the beggar, the warrior and the poet, all meet the same end, and all crave the same warmth before it comes. Yet the miracle of life is that love persists despite knowing it will one day end. We build families, write letters, and whisper vows under the knowledge that time will take it all. And still, we love. This, perhaps, is humanity’s greatest act of courage: to open the heart in a mortal world.

Alexievich, who listened to the voices of widows, soldiers, and exiles, teaches us that love and death are not opposites, but partners in the dance of existence. Death gives love its urgency, its beauty, its unbearable sweetness. Love gives death its sorrow, its depth, its echo across generations. Everything — art, faith, revolution, memory — is born of this sacred tension. To ignore either is to misunderstand life itself.

And so, the lesson is this: embrace both. Do not flee from death, for in doing so you flee from life. And do not fear love, though it will one day break your heart, for through love you touch the eternal. Live with the knowledge of your finiteness, but love as though it were infinite. In doing so, you join the ancient lineage of those who found meaning not beyond this world, but within it — in every heartbeat, every farewell, every act of kindness that defies oblivion.

For as Svetlana Alexievich reminds us, everything evolves from love and death — and those who dare to look into both without flinching will find the full truth of what it means to be human.