Quotes from A Long Way Gone

“Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them. ”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy and confusion.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“When I was young, my father used to say, ‘If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.’ I thought about these words during my journey, and they kept me moving even when I didn’t know where I was going. Those words became the vehicle that drove my spirit forward and made it stay alive.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“...children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I've come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end...”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“We must strive to be like the moon”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“I was still hesitant to let myself let go, because I still believed in the fragility of happiness.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“Some people tried to hurt us to protect themselves, their family and communities...This was one of the consequences of civil war. People stopped trusting each other, and every stranger became an enemy. Even people who knew you became extremely careful about how they related or spoke to you.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“My childhood had gone by without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“ONE OF THE UNSETTLING THINGS about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn’t sure when or where it was going to end.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“My teeth became sour as I listened to his story. It was then that I understood why he was quiet all the time.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“At night it felt as if we were walking with the moon. It followed us under thick clouds and waited for us at the other end of dark forest paths. It would disappear with sunrise but return again, hovering on our path. Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them. Under these stars I used to hear stories, but now it seemed as if it was the sky that was telling us a story as its stars fell, violently colliding with each other. The moon hid behind clouds to avoid seeing what was happening.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“That night for the first time in my life I realized that it is the physical presence of people and their spirits that gives a town life. With the absence of so many people, the town became scary., the night darker, and the silence unbearably agitating. Normally, the crickets and the birds sang in the evening before the sun went down. But this time they didn't, and the darkness set in very fast. The mood wasn't in the sky; the air was stiff, as if nature itself was afraid of what was happening.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“Sometimes I closed my eyes hard to avoid thinking, but the eye of the mind refused to be closed and continued to plague me with images.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“The branches of the trees looked as if they were holding hands and bowing their heads in prayer.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“I was sad to leave, but I was also pleased to have met people outside of Sierra Leone. Because if I was to get killed upon my return, I knew that a memory of my existence was alive somewhere in the world.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“I took out my grenade and put my fingers inside the pin. 'Do you boys want this to be your last meal, or do you want to answer his question?”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“My squad is my family, my gun is my provider, and protector, and my rule is to kill or be killed.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“I was afraid to fall asleep, but staying awake also brought back painful memories. Memories I sometimes wish I could wash away, even though I am aware that they are an important part of what my life is; who I am now. I stayed up all night, anxiously waiting for daylight, so that I could fully return to my new life, to rediscover happiness I had known as a child, the joy that had stayed alive inside me even through times when being alive itself became a burden. These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“We took a bowl each and started eating. He went back into the little room, and by the time he returned to the table with his own bowl of food to eat with us, we had already finished. He was shocked and looked around to see if we had done something else with the food.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“I wanted to see my family, even if it meant dying with them.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past." (page 20)”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“I concluded to myself that if I were the hunter, I would shoot the monkey so that it would no longer have the chance to put other hunters in the same predicament.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“I was glad to see other faces and at the same time disappointed that the war had destroyed the enjoyment of the very experience of meeting people.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“We danced and laughed into the morning. But gradually we stopped. It was as if we all knew that we could be happy for only a brief moment.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“If you're alive, then there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

“I didn’t know what to do in my happy state. I was still hesitant to let myself let go, because I still believed in the fragility of happiness.”
― Ishmael Beah, quote from A Long Way Gone

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Popular quotes

“We deserve some respect. You deserve some respect. You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself. You should take care of, help and be good to yourself the same way you would take care of, help and be good to someone you loved and valued. You may therefore have to conduct yourself habitually in a manner that allows you some respect for your own Being—and fair enough. But every person is deeply flawed. Everyone falls short of the glory of God. If that stark fact meant, however, that we had no responsibility to care, for ourselves as much as others, everyone would be brutally punished all the time. That would not be good. That would make the shortcomings of the world, which can make everyone who thinks honestly question the very propriety of the world, worse in every way. That simply cannot be the proper path forward.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, quote from 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“But don't you think that everybody is finally the same in the most essential ways? Some lives are probably much duller than others, but it's impossible to know how people live inside themselves, isn't it? I mean, a life could seem boring on the outside and be tumultuous within. Isn't cruelty more contemptible than ordinariness?”
― Siri Hustvedt, quote from The Blindfold

“Nancy grabbed Plum's hand and together they ran around the last curve and then they were leaning against the old stone wall that marked Lookout Hill. Far, far down below them, a river was trying to wriggle its way out of a steep canyon. Over to the right, thick green hills crowded close to each other to share one filmy white cloud. To the left, as far as they could see the land flowed into valleys that shaded from a pale watery green, through lime, emerald, jade, leaf, forest to a dark, dark, bluish-green, almost black. The rivers were like inky lines, the ponds like ink blots.”
― Betty MacDonald, quote from Nancy and Plum

“statistics should be substituted for truth, vote-counting for principles, numbers for rights, and public polls for morality—that pragmatic, range-of-the-moment expediency should be the criterion of a country’s interests, and that the number of its adherents should be the criterion of an idea’s truth or falsehood—that any desire of any nature whatsoever should be accepted as a valid claim, provided it is held by a sufficient number of people—that a majority may do anything it pleases to a minority—in short, gang rule and mob rule”
― Ayn Rand, quote from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

“You could get crickets to pop out of a book as a little, little girl, but now you have to relearn it? Well, children can do so many things until they're told they can't.”
― quote from The Anybodies

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