Ayi Kwei Armah · 191 pages
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“Alone, i am nothing. i have nothing.we have power.but we will never know it,we will never see it work.unless we come together to make it work.”
― Ayi Kwei Armah, quote from The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
“Disgust with injustice may sharpen the desire for justice. Readers who don’t see this connection merely wish to be entertained, and I have neither skill nor desire to turn the agony of a people into entertainment.”
― Ayi Kwei Armah, quote from The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
“The sand looked so beautiful then, so many little individual grains in the light of the night, giving the watcher the childhood feeling of infinite things finally understood, the humiliating feeling of the watcher's nothingness.”
― Ayi Kwei Armah, quote from The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
“True, I used to see a lot of hope. I saw men tear down the veils behind which the truth had been hidden. But then the same men, when they have power in their hands at last, began to find the veils useful. They made many more. Life has not changed. Only some people have been growing, becoming different, that is all. After a youth spent fighting the white man, why should not the president discover as he grows older that his real desire has been to be like the white governor himself, to live above all the blackness in the big old slave castle?”
― Ayi Kwei Armah, quote from The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
“Outrage alternated with a sweaty fear he had never before felt. Something, it seemed to him was being drained from him, leaving the body feeling like a very dry sponge, very light, completely at the mercy of sly toying gusts of wind.”
― Ayi Kwei Armah, quote from The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
“Therefore, the best criterion for choosing what to keep and what to discard is whether keeping it will make you happy, whether it will bring you joy.”
― Marie Kondō, quote from The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
“Some people,” the Vizier went on, “think it’s the world of anxieties and dreams – your world, in short – that governs this one. I myself think it’s from this world that everything is governed. I think it’s this world that chooses the dreams and anxieties and imaginings that ought to be brought to the surface, as a bucket draws water from a well. Do you see what I mean? It’s this world that selects what it wants from the abyss.”
― Ismail Kadare, quote from The Palace of Dreams
“The Armadillo A big fiesta was announced on Lake Titicaca, and the armadillo, who was a very superior creature, wanted to dazzle everybody. Long beforehand, he set to weaving a cloak of such elegance that it would knock all eyes out. The fox noticed him at work. “Are you in a bad mood?” “Don’t distract me. I’m busy.” “What’s that for?” The armadillo explained. “Ah,” said the fox, savoring the words, “for the fiesta tonight?” “What do you mean, tonight?” The armadillo’s heart sank. He had never been more sure of his time calculations. “And me with my cloak only half finished!” While the fox took off with a smothered laugh, the armadillo finished the cloak in a hurry. As time was flying, he had to use coarser threads, and the weave ended up too big. For this reason the armadillo’s shell is tight-warped around the neck and very open at the back. (174)”
― Eduardo Galeano, quote from Genesis
“It takes far less courage to cling to the past than it does to face the future".”
― Sandra Brown, quote from Envy
“The thing to remember when you're writing is, it's not whether or not what you put on paper is true. It's whether it wakes a truth in your reader.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from The Blue Girl
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