“You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your perception...you see what is, where most people see what they expect.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“It’s bad enough . . . when a country gets colonized, but when the people do as well! That’s the end, really, that’s the end.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“...condemning Nyasha to whoredom, making her a victim of her femaleness, just as I had felt victimised at home in the days when Nhamo went to school and I grew my maize. The victimisation, I saw, was universal. It didn't depend on poverty, on lack of education or on tradition. It didn't depend on any of the things I had thought it depended on. Men took it everywhere with them. Even heroes like Babamukuru did it. And that was the problem. You had to admit Nyasha had no tact. You had to admit she was altogether too volatile and strong-willed. You couldn't ignore the fact that she had no respect for Babamukuru when she ought to have had lots of it. But what I didn't like was the way that all conflicts came back to the question of femaleness. Femaleness as opposed and inferior to maleness.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“Everything about her spoke of alternatives and possibilities that if considered too deeply would wreak havoc with the neat plan I had laid out for my life.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“Can you cook books and feed them to your husband? Stay at home with your mother. Learn to cook and clean. Grow vegetables.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“You can't go on all the time being whatever’s necessary. Youve got to have some conviction, and I’m convinced I don't want to be anyone’s underdog.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“I was not sorry when my brother died”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“You can't go on all the time being whatever's necessary. You've got to have some conviction, and I'm convinced I don't want to be anyone's underdog. It's not right for anyone to be that. But once you get used to it, well, it just seems natural and you just carry on. And that's the end of you. You're trapped.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“Nyasha knew nothing about leaving. She had only been taken to places - to the mission, to England, back to the mission. She did not know what essential parts of you stayed behind no matter how violently you tried to dislodge them in order to take them with you.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“Babamukuru was always impressive when he made these speeches of his. He was a rigid, imposing perfectionist, steely enough in character to function in the puritanical way that he expected, or rather insisted, that the rest of the world should function. Luckily, or maybe unluckily for him, throughout his life Babamukuru had found himself - as eldest child and son, as an early educated African, as headmaster, as husband and father, as provider to many - in positions that enabled him to organise his immediate world and its contents as he wished. Even when this was not the case, as when he went to the mission as a young boy, the end result of such periods of submission was greater power than before. Thus he had been insulated from the necessity of considering alternatives unless they were his own. Stoically he accepted his divinity. Filled with awe, we accepted it too. We used to marvel at how benevolent that divinity was. Babamukuru was good. We all agreed on this. More significantly still, Babamukuru was right.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“She thinks she is white,' they used to sneer, and that was as bad as a curse.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“I knew, for instance, that rooms where people slept exuded peculiarly human smells just as the goat pen smelt goaty and the cattle kraal bovine. It was common knowledge among the younger girls at school that the older girls menstruated into sundry old rags which they washed and reused and washed again. I knew, too, that the fact of menstruation was a shamefully unclean secret that should not be allowed to contaminate immaculate male ears by indiscreet reference to this type of first in their presence.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“...and thinking how dreadfully familiar that scene had been, with Babamukuru condemning Nyasha to whoredom, making her a victim of here femaleness, just as I had felt victimised at home in the days when Nhamo went to school and I grew my maize. The victimisation, I saw was universal. It didn't depend on poverty, on lack of education or on tradition. It didn't depend on any of the things I thought it depended on. Men took it everywhere with them. Even heroes like Babamukuru did it. And that was the problem.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“What it is,” she sighed, “to have to choose between self and security.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“Now why [...] should I worry about what people say when my own father call me a whore?”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
“In the city Maiguru's brother immediately made an appointment with a psychiatrist. We felt better—help was at hand. But the psychiatrist said that Nyasha could not be ill, that Africans did not suffer in the way we had described. She was making a scene. We should take her home and be firm with her.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, quote from Nervous Conditions
Tsitsi Dangarembga
Born place: Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
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“It's always better to attack than to defend," Coram had told her when they talked about fencing late at night. "Always. Ye don't win with defense--ye only hold the other feller off, or wear him down. Attack and have done with it!”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Alanna: The First Adventure
“We have advantages. We have a cushion to fall back on. This is abundance. A luxury of place and time. Something rare and wonderful. It's almost historically unprecedented. We must do extraordinary things. We have to. It would be absurd not to.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
“there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters”
― Clement C. Moore, quote from The Night Before Christmas
“But we are here, all of us. And we're here because I love you, more than the life that was mine. Because I believed you loved me the same way...will you tell me that's not true?
No, he said after a moment, so softly I could barely hear him. His hand tightened harder on mine. No, I willna tell ye that. Not ever, Claire.”
― Diana Gabaldon, quote from A Breath of Snow and Ashes
“There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be. You are too young to know this. You are still becoming. Not being.”
― John Fowles, quote from The Magus
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