“There were lots of ways to lose your farm. In the beginning it was mostly violent. Now, though, the process had become highly formal, and in many ways more chilling. Ordinary citizens who supported the ruling party and claimed they wanted to farm simply applied to the Registrar of Deeds for a farm and, if approved, got what was called an offer letter. This applicant, known as an A2 farmer, simply drove onto the farm he had been allocated, handed his letter to the farmer if he was still on the land, and told him he was the new owner. “It’s like winning the lottery, except you don’t even have to buy a ticket,” Dad told me.”
― quote from The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
“Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans had starved to death or died of disease under Robert Mugabe; the more incredible story was how so many millions managed to survive. They refused to become victims.”
― quote from The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
“It was happening again: everyone wanted their story told.”
― quote from The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
“My father couldn’t believe what the soldier was telling him in that phone call: “Come on, Walter, what do you mean they’re diamond dealers?” “Mr. Rogers, let me be certain: our town is overrun! There are thousands! I have arrested many! Some are drunk, and when I ask from where they are coming they all say that secret place, that place in the bush where they have beer, that place they call Drifters!” Dad felt a flush of outlaw pride—followed by something approximating panic. The last thing he needed was Walter and his CIO comrades raiding his lodge. But Walter must have sensed his concern. “Don’t worry, Mr. Rogers,” he said quietly, conspiratorially. “I instruct them to keep very quiet about your place. Very quiet …” He pressed a finger to his lips. It wasn’t hard to meet a diamond dealer at Drifters. You just had to walk into the bar. I”
― quote from The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
“We’ve killed twelve hundred, we’re going to win the war! We’ve killed twelve hundred, we’re going to win the war!” I was nine years old. I”
― quote from The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
“Inflation had spun out of control as a direct result of the land invasions. In breaking its own laws and dispossessing its own citizens, the state not only destroyed the sector of the economy that provided 50 percent of its foreign revenue, but it also frightened away foreign investors. Without foreign currency to pay its bills, the government simply started printing money. Then more money. And still more. Once they started, they couldn’t stop; it became an addiction.”
― quote from The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
“They had held power for more than twenty-six years, they controlled every aspect of the state to the extent that you couldn’t openly say what you thought, and yet someone else was always to blame. Belligerent victimhood is a mark of tyranny, an ugly and dangerous thing to behold.”
― quote from The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
“Belligerent victimhood is a mark of tyranny, an ugly and dangerous thing to behold. The”
― quote from The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
“Now Mugabe has a policy to ‘look east.’ To look to the Chinese to invest in us. What is a Chinese going to understand about Africa? It will take another hundred years! Mugabe’s policies are denial. The base of the Zimbabwean economy is Western investment for over one hundred years since colonialism. The fabric of this economy is investment.”
― quote from The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
“What did we do before candles?” went the local joke. “Electricity.” The joke became dated fast, because soon shops ran out of candles. My”
― quote from The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
“It is one of the strange discoveries a man makes that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration; there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times: even in danger and misery the pendulum swings. —GRAHAM GREENE, The Power and the Glory”
― quote from The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
“You want to know the real reason for the invasions?” said Hammy, taking a deep drag on his cigarette. “The government had run the economy so badly into the ground that they needed a distraction for all the people without jobs.”
― quote from The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
“he’d bought his farm in 1985 after attending a meeting the president called to ask white farmers to stay in the country. Incredibly, it is estimated that by 2000, 76 percent of white-owned farms had in fact been purchased after independence, and it became illegal after 1987 for anyone to sell a farm without first offering it to the government.”
― quote from The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
“Commercial farming makes up only twenty-eight percent of this country’s land. But there’s a black farmers’ union that represent six percent of that. The Development Trust, which is government, has three percent. There are black tenant farmers with four percent. And Forestry has one percent. That leaves whites with about fourteen percent of the country’s land. Doesn’t sound the same as seventy percent, does it? And that fourteen percent produced about sixty-five percent of all agricultural produce and fifty percent of foreign earnings, and employed or supported almost two million people. But all you ever heard about was us greedy white farmers.” Everyone”
― quote from The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
“Catherine thought Simon was in the locket, and in heaven, and with them still. Lucas hoped she didn't expect him to be happy about having so many Simons to contend with.”
― Michael Cunningham, quote from Specimen Days
“But it never worked that way, and the sex just made her lonelier. I understood that, as it had made me lonelier too. I could never remember being lonely, certainly not in this way, until I had seen the edge of the ways you could be with another person, which brought up all the myriad ways that person could never be there for you.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Truth and Beauty
“That woman needs protecting like Rambo needs a bodyguard.”
― Jennifer Crusie, quote from Manhunting
“I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world's cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in blurry, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters
“Limbaji grinned widely and reached for a stone. “But this is what different religions mean,” he said, placing the stone on the ground. “God is for all men, he is always the same. There is only one. And all men finally go to the same God.” He drew lines toward the stone in the dust. “But there are different roads.” From”
― Eric Blehm, quote from The Last Season
The Rule of Four
The Library at Mount...
I'll Meet You There
The Mistress of Spic...
DragonQuest
Death at La FeniceBookQuoters 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.
