Quotes from Beasts of No Nation

“I am fearing because I am seeing that the only way not to be fighting is to die. I am not wanting to die.”
― Uzodinma Iweala, quote from Beasts of No Nation

“so we were playing all this game then and thinking that to be a soldier was to be the best thing in the world because gun is looking so powerful and the men in movie are looking so powerful and strong when they are killing people,but I am knowing now that to be a soldier is only to be weak and not strong, and to have no food to eat and not to eat whatever you want, and also to have people making you do thing that you are not wanting to do and not to be doing whatever you are wanting which is what they are doing in movie. But I am only knowing this now because I am soldier now.”
― Uzodinma Iweala, quote from Beasts of No Nation

“I am waiting outside in the darkness making myself ready for when I go in. So I am thinking as many good thing I can think because if you are thinking good thing, nothing bad is happening to you.”
― Uzodinma Iweala, quote from Beasts of No Nation

“I am remembering the soldier who are coming to my village and I am holding my machete closer. I am liking how it is feeling in my hand, like it is almost part of my body.”
― Uzodinma Iweala, quote from Beasts of No Nation

“Si j'étais le soleil, je chercherais un autre endroit pour illuminer, un endroit où les gens n'utiliseraient pas ma lumière pour faire des choses horribles.”
― Uzodinma Iweala, quote from Beasts of No Nation

“I'm walking walking walking to where the sun is setting. I'm looking at it and wanting to catch it in my hand and to be squeezing until color are dripping out from it forever. That way everywhere it is always dark and nobody is ever having to see any of the terrible thing that is happening in this world.”
― Uzodinma Iweala, quote from Beasts of No Nation

“Je suis toutes ces choses. Toutes ces choses, mais j'ai déjà eu une mère, et elle m'aimait.”
― Uzodinma Iweala, quote from Beasts of No Nation

“And now the woman is praying to God............... I am laughing laughing because God is forgetting everybody in this country.”
― Uzodinma Iweala, quote from Beasts of No Nation

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Popular quotes

“I thought that probably I was worth more when I was younger.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit

“ . . . he thought how easy it would be to simply kick his typewriter onto the floor and smash it to pieces among the wads of discarded paper that overflowed his waste basket.”
― Bodie Thoene, quote from Vienna Prelude

“Because if I see you defeated, then I think I will see Alban defeated, and if that happens, none of us can go on. To guard you is to guard the heart of this land of ours.”
― Juliet Marillier, quote from Shadowfell

“If you can’t find good in your own country, you won’t find it anywhere
else.”
The words slipped out from Zaki Bey, but he felt that they were ungracious
so he smiled to lessen their impact on Busayna, who had
stood up and was saying bitterly, “You don’t understand because
you’re well-off. When you’ve stood for two hours at the bus stop or
taken three different buses and had to go through hell every day just to
get home, when your house has collapsed and the government has left
you sitting with your children in a tent on the street, when the police
officer has insulted you and beaten you just because you’re on a
minibus at night, when you’ve spent the whole day going around the
shops looking for work and there isn’t any, when you’re a fine sturdy
young man with an education and all you have in your pockets is a
pound, or sometimes nothing at all, then you’ll know why we hate
Egypt.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, quote from The Yacoubian Building

“it was customary in long-past centuries on Earth for every man bold enough to aspire to the right to be considered by others and to consider himself a “conscious thinker” to be instructed, while still in the early years of his responsible existence, that man has two kinds of mentation one kind, mentation by thought, expressed by words always possessing a relative meaning, and another kind, proper to all animals as well as to man, which I would call “mentation by form.” The second kind of mentation, that is, “mentation by form”—through which, by the way, the exact meaning of all writing should be perceived and then assimilated after conscious confrontation with information previously acquired—is determined in people by the conditions of geographical locality, climate, time, and in general the whole environment in which they have arisen and in which their existence has flowed up to adulthood. Thus, in the brains of people of different races living in different geographical localities under different conditions, there arise in regard to one and the same thing or idea quite different independent forms, which during the flow of associations evoke in their being a definite sensation giving rise to a definite picturing, and this picturing is expressed by some word or other that serves only for its outer subjective expression. That is why each word for the same thing or idea almost always acquires for people of different geographical localities and races a quite specific and entirely different so to say “inner content.” In other words, if in the “presence” of a man who has arisen and grown up in a given locality a certain “form” has been fixed as a result of specific local influences and impressions, this “form” evokes in him by association the sensation of a definite “inner content,” and consequently a definite picturing or concept, for the expression of which he uses some word that has become habitual and, as I said, subjective to him, but the hearer of that word—in whose being, owing to the different conditions of his arising and growth, a form with a different “inner content” has been fixed for the given word—will always perceive and infallibly understand that word in quite another sense.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff, quote from Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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