“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
“listening to Joe and after the game warden had dispatched the suffering animal. “I could see them sending someone out here to shut up The Earl once and for all. They came, shot him, and hung him from the windmill, and they were on a plane back to O’Hare by the time you found him.” “It may be what happened,” Joe said, “but it’s speculation at best. Marcus Hand sent two of his investigators east, and they may come back with something before the trial is over. But they may not. What I have trouble with in that scenario is how this Chicago hit man would know to frame Missy.” Nate said, “They had an insider.” “And who would that be?” “The same guy who told Laurie Talich where she could find me.” “Bud?” “Bingo,” Nate said. “It took a while for me to figure it out and there are still some loose ends I’d like closed, but it makes sense. Missy knew vaguely where I was living because she talks to her daughter, and last year she tried to hire me to put the fear of God into Bud, remember? She might have let it slip to her ex-husband that if he didn’t stop pining over her, she’d drive to Hole in the Wall Canyon and pick me up. Somehow, Bud found out where I was. And by happenstance, he meets a woman in the bar who has come west for the single purpose of avenging her husband. Bud has contacts with the National Guard who just returned from Afghanistan, and he was able to help her get a rocket launcher. Then he drew her a map. He must have been pretty smug about how it all worked out. He thought he was able to take me out of the picture without getting his own hands dirty.” “Bud—what’s happened to him?” Joe asked, not sure he was convinced of Nate’s theory. “Why has he gone so crazy on us?” “A man can only take so”
― C.J. Box, quote from Cold Wind
“The qualities of a rebel are multidimensional. The first thing: The rebel does not believe in anything except his own experience. His truth is his only truth; no prophet, no messiah, no savior, no holy scripture, no ancient tradition can give him his truth. They can talk about truth, they can make much ado about truth, but to know about truth is not to know truth. The word about means around—to know about truth means to go around and around it. But by going around and around you never reach to the center. The rebel has no belief system—theist or atheist, Hindu or Christian, he is an inquirer, a seeker. But a very subtle thing has to be understood: That is, the rebel is not an egoist. The egoist also does not want to belong to any church, to any ideology, to any belief system, but his reason for not belonging is totally different from that of the rebel. He does not want to belong because he thinks too much of himself. He is too much of an egoist; he can only stand alone. The rebel is not an egoist; he is utterly innocent. His nonbelieving is not an arrogant attitude but a humble approach. He is simply saying, “Unless I find my own truth, all borrowed truths are only burdening me; they are not going to unburden me. I can become knowledgeable, but I will not be knowing anything with my own being; I will not be an eyewitness to any experience.” The”
― Osho, quote from Living on Your Own Terms: What Is Real Rebellion?
“Where most people live, most of us, imagining it to be the real sunlit world when it is only a cave lit by the flickering fires of illusion.”
― E.L. Doctorow, quote from Andrew's Brain
“Tim considered the school. “Maybe I want to walk down the hallway with you, hand in hand, like I should have done a long time ago.” Ben’s eyes softened. “You don’t have to do this.” “I want to.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Winter
“A minute teaches me sixty different ways to think about you.”
― Faraaz Kazi, quote from Truly, Madly, Deeply
The Alexandria Quart...
Dead in the Family
Paranormalcy
The Magicians' Guild
Eclipse
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