Quotes from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“The love of a single heart can make a world of difference.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“I knew that my heart and mind would always be tempted to feel anger--to find blame and hate. But I resolved that when the negative feelings came upon me, I wouldn't wait for them to grow or fester. I would always turn immediately to the Source of all true power: I would turn to God and let His love and forgiveness protect and save me.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“But I came to learn that God never shows us something we aren't ready to understand. Instead, He lets us see what we need to see, when we need to see it. He'll wait until our eyes and hearts are open to Him, and then when we're ready, He will plant our feet on the path that's best for us...but it's up to us to do the walking.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“They can only kill us once.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“Instead of negotiating or begging for mercy, [my brother Damascene] challenged them to kill him. "Go ahead," he said. "What are you waiting for? Today is my day to go to God. I can feel Him all around us. He is watching, waiting to take me home. Go ahead--finish your work and send me to paradise. I pity you for killing people like it's some kind of child's game. Murder is no game: If you offend God, you will pay for your fun. The blood of the innocent people you cut down will follow you to your reckoning. But I am praying for you. . . I pray that you see the evil you're doing and ask God's forgiveness before it's too late.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“I realized that my battle to survive this war would have to be fought inside of me.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“Author says her father was so diplomatic that when people came to him for solutions, people not only accepted them, but they believed they thought of them.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“The author recognizes the power of the persecuting tribe referring to members of hers consistently as "snakes" or "roaches". This dehumanizing language, she realizes, seeps into the subconscious and makes it easier to forget that fellow humans were created in God's image.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“This is the same power that I feel propelling me forward into the next phase of my life. God saved my soul and spared my life for a reason: He left me to tell my story to others and show as many people as possible the healing power of His love and forgiveness.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“I came to learn that God never shows us something we aren’t ready to understand. Instead, He lets us see what we need to see, when we need to see it. He’ll wait until our eyes and hearts are open to Him, and then when we’re ready, He will plant our feet on the path that’s best for us . . . but it’s up to us to do the walking.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“The world had seen the same thing happen many times before. After it happened in Nazi Germany, all the big, powerful countries swore, “Never again!” But here we were, six harmless females huddled in darkness, marked for execution because we were born Tutsi. How had history managed to repeat itself? How had this evil managed to surface once again? Why had the devil been allowed to walk among us unchallenged, poisoning hearts and minds until it was too late?”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“Cuando yo es imposible para nosotros cambiar una situacion, el reto es cambiarnos a nosotros mismos.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“I see thunderstorms around us now, but these are just baby storms,” the psychic told her. “The mother storm is coming. When she arrives, her lightning will scorch the land, her thunder will deafen us, and her heavy rain will drown us all. The storm will last for three months and many will die. Those who escape will find no one to turn to—every friendly face will have perished.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“We carried on like that through letters and phone calls for the next two years. And things didn’t change when Aimable graduated as a doctor of veterinary medicine”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“That night I prayed with a clear conscience and a clean heart. For the first time since I entered the bathroom, I slept in peace.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

“However, Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian general in charge of the UN peacekeepers, refused to obey his orders to leave and remained with a couple hundred soldiers. He was a brave and moral man, but he was also alone in a sea of killers. We heard him often on the radio begging for someone, anyone, to send troops to Rwanda to stop the slaughter, but no one listened to him. Belgium, our country’s former colonial ruler, had been the first to pull its soldiers out of the country; meanwhile, the United States wouldn’t even acknowledge that the genocide was happening!”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

About the author

Popular quotes

“So what is the answer? How can you stand your ground when you are weak and sensitive to pain, when people you love are still alive, when you are unprepared?
What do you need to make you stronger than the Interrogator and the whole trap?
From the moment you go to prison you must put your cozy past firmly behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself: "My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there's nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die—now or a little later. But later on, in truth, it will be even harder, and so the sooner the better. I no longer have any property whatsoever. For me those I love have died, and for them I have died. From today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me."
Confronted by such a prisoner, the Interrogation will tremble.
Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, quote from The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volume 1

“Sam found a chair under Robin’s butt and evicted him from it, bringing it over to his pregnant wife.“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” Robin apologized.
“Thanks,” Alyssa said to Robin as she sat down, even as she gave Sam a darkly amused look.
“What?” he said. “I was just helping him think.”
― Suzanne Brockmann, quote from All Through the Night

“The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.”
― Marquis de Sade, quote from Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings

“She thought about her future. For sixteen years, she’d lived for one thing and one thing only, and now her life seemed superfluous. What would she do? Take care of Jinx. And every day she would go over questions that had haunted man since the beginning of time. What am I doing here? Who am I? What’s my purpose? Those”
― Anne Frasier, quote from Hush

“What would have happened had he not been killed? He would certainly have had a rocky road to the nomination. The power of the Johnson administration and much of the party establishment was behind Humphrey. Still, the dynamism was behind Kennedy, and he might well have swept the convention. If nominated, he would most probably have beaten the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon. Individuals do make a difference to history. A Robert Kennedy presidency would have brought a quick end to American involvement in the Vietnam War. Those thousands of Americans—and many thousands more Vietnamese and Cambodians—who were killed from 1969 to 1973 would have been at home with their families. A Robert Kennedy presidency would have consolidated and extended the achievements of John Kennedy’s New Frontier and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The liberal tide of the 1960s was still running strong enough in 1969 to affect Nixon’s domestic policies. The Environmental Protection Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act with its CETA employment program were all enacted under Nixon. If that still fast-flowing tide so influenced a conservative administration, what signal opportunities it would have given a reform president! The confidence that both black and white working-class Americans had in Robert Kennedy would have created the possibility of progress toward racial reconciliation. His appeal to the young might have mitigated some of the under-thirty excesses of the time. And of course the election of Robert Kennedy would have delivered the republic from Watergate, with its attendant subversion of the Constitution and destruction of faith in government. RRK”
― Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., quote from Robert Kennedy and His Times

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.