“The problem with English is this: You usually can't open your mouth and it comes out just like that--first you have to think what you want to say. Then you have to find the words. Then you have to carefully arrange those words in your head. Then you have to say the words quietly to yourself, to make sure you got them okay. And finally, the last step, which is to say the words out loud and have them sound just right.
But then because you have to do all this, when you get to the final step, something strange has happened to you and you speak the way a drunk walks. And, because you are speaking like falling, it's as if you are an idiot, when the truth is that it's the language and the whole process that's messed up. And then the problem with those who speak only English is this: they don't know how to listen; they are busy looking at your falling instead of paying attention to what you are saying.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“Look at the children of the land leaving in droves, leaving their own land with bleeding wounds on their bodies and shock on their faces and blood in their hearts and hunger in their stomachs and grief in their footsteps. Leaving their mothers and fathers and children behind, leaving their umbilical cords underneath the soil, leaving the bones of their ancestors in the earth, leaving everything that makes them who and what they are, leaving because it is no longer possible to stay. They will never be the same again because you cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“Because we were not in our country, we could not use our own languages, and so when we spoke our voices came out bruised.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“Look at them leaving in droves despite knowing they will be welcomed with restraint in those strange lands because they do not belong, knowing they will have to sit on one buttock because they must not sit comfortable lest they be asked to rise and leave, knowing they will speak in dampened whispers because they must not let their voices drown those of the owners of the land, knowing they will have to walk on their toes because they must not leave footprints on the new earth lest they be mistaken for those who want to claim the land as theirs. Look at them leaving in droves, arm in arm with loss and lost, look at them leaving in droves.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“If you are stealing something it’s better if it’s small and hideable or something you can eat quickly and be done with, like guavas. This way, people can’t see you with the thing to be reminded that you are a shameless thief and that you stole it from them, so I don’t know what the white people were trying to do in the first place, stealing not just a tiny piece but a whole country. Who can ever forget you stole something like that?”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“Leaving your country is like dying, and when you come back you are like a ghost returning to earth, roaming around with missing gaze in your eyes”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“They will never be the same again because you just cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“And when they asked us where we were from, we exchanged glances and smiled with the shyness of child brides. They said, Africa? We nodded yes. What part of Africa? We smiled. Is it that part where vultures wait for famished children to die? We smiled. Where the life expectancy is thirty-five years? We smiled? Is is there where dissidents shove AK-47s between women's legs? We smiled. Where people run about naked? We smiled. That part where they massacred each other? We smiled. Is it where the old president rigged the election and people were tortured and killed and a whole bunch of them put in prison and all, there where they are dying of cholera - oh my God, yes, we've seen your country; it's been on the news.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“There are times, though, that no matter how much food I eat, I find the food does nothing for me, like I am hungry for my country and nothing is going to fix that”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“As for the coldness, I have never seen it like this. I mean, coldness that makes like it wants to kill you, like it's telling you, with its snow, that you should go back to where you came from.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“Because we were not in our country, we could not use our own languages, and so when we spoke our voices came out bruised. When we talked, our tongues thrashed madly in our mouths, staggered like drunken men. Because we were not using our languages we said things we did not mean; what we really wanted to say remained folded inside. trapped. In America we did not always have the words. It was only when were were by ourselves that we spoke in our real voices. When we were alone we summoned the horses of our languages and mounted their backs and galloped past skyscrapers. Always, we were reluctant to come back.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“I know that when she looks in the mirror she sees an ugly fat cow and that she hates her body because it’s not what it’s supposed to look like. This is why she is starving herself, which again her parents don’t know. I also know that if she cannot get out of eating she goes to the bathroom and vomits it all. It was all in her diary that I found hidden under the bed while I was cleaning her room; I read it because hidden things are meant to be discovered. I wonder how she lives, how she deals with the hunger, those long, terrible claws that dig and dig in your stomach until you can barely see, barely walk upright, barely think, and you would do anything, anything, for even just a crumb.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“Others with names like myths, names like puzzles, names we had never heard before: Virgilio, Balamugunthan, Faheem, Abdulrahman, Aziz, Baako, Dae-Hyun, Ousmane, Kimatsu. When it was hard to say the many strange names, we called them by their countries.
So how on earth do you do this, Sri Lanka?
Mexico, are you coming or what?
Is it really true you sold a kidney to come to America, India?
Guys, just give Tshaka Zulu a break, the guy is old, I'm just saying.
We know you despise this job, Sudan, but deal with it, man.
Come, Ethiopia, move, move, move; Israel, Kazakhstn, Niger, brothers, let's go!”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“You pray and pray and pray and nothing changes, like for example I prayed for a real house and good clothes and a bicycle and things for a long, long, time, and none of it happened, not even one little thing, which is how I know that all this praying for Father is just people playing.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“It's not the lying itself that makes me feel bad but the fact that I'm here lying to my friends.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky. They flee their own wretched land so their hunger may be pacified in foreign lands, their tears wiped away in strange lands, the wounds of their despair bandaged in faraway lands, their blistered prayers muttered in the darkness of queer lands.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“If these walls could talk, the buildings would stutter, wouldn't remember their names.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“I think the reason they are my relatives now is they are from my country too - it's like the country has become a real family since we are in America, which is not our country”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“Heaven is boring. Didn't you see, in that picture book back when we used to go to school? It's just plain and white and there is not even any color and it's too orderly. Like there will be crazy prefects telling you all the time: Do thus, don't do that, where are your shoes, tuck in your shirt, shhh, God doesn't like it and will punish you, keep your voice low you'll wake the angels, go and wash, you are dirty, Bastard says.
Me, when I die I want to go where there's lots of food and music and a party that never ends and we're singing that Jobho song, Godknows says.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“...and the women spread their ntsaroz and sit on one side, the men on the other, like they are two different rivers that are not supposed to meet.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“If Messenger would be to open his mouth right now, his voice would be a terrible wound.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“Aunt Fostalina says when she first came to America she went to school during the day and worked nights at Eliot’s hotels, cleaning hotel rooms together with people from countries like Senegal, Cameroon, Tibet, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and so on. It was like the damn United Nations there, she likes to say.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“Further and further we go, and the sun keeps ironing us and ironing us and ironing us.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“We're hungry but we're together and we're at home and everything is sweeter than dessert.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“That crown on her head is very heavy, that's why she is smiling like that, smiling like she just ate a whole bunch of unripe guavas. It's heavy because it's made of gold, Godknows says.
I thought crowns were made of thorns. I saw a picture of it in the Bible, when they were killing Jesus, Sbho says.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“Why do you want to see her thing? Don't you have yours to look at if you really want to see one?”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“Now when the men talk, their voices burn in the air, making smoke all over the place. We hear about change, about new country, about democracy, about elections and what-what.
They talk and talk, the men, lick their lips and look at the dead watches on their wrists and shake their hands and slap each other and laugh like they have swallowed thunder.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
“He doesn't tell Aunt Fostalina she looks good, like I've heard other people do; he tells her she looks like sunrise.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, quote from We Need New Names
NoViolet Bulawayo
Born place: in Zimbabwe
Born date October 12, 1981
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“They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, quote from Their Eyes Were Watching God
“Not into older guys, huh?" asked Adrian once we were alone.
"You're imagining things," I said. "Clearly, my stunning beauty has clouded your mind.”
― Richelle Mead, quote from Frostbite
“When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, quote from Eat, Pray, Love
“My dear fellow, the truth isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest
“I don't know what this great thing I'm meant to be doing is, and it looks to me as if I was supposed not to know. And I resent that, right?
"The old me knew. The old me cared. Fine, so far so good. Except that the old me cared so much that he actually got inside his own brain--my own brain--and locked off the bits that knew and cared, because if I knew and cared I wouldn't be able to do it. [...]
"But this former self of mine killed himself off, didn't he, by changing my brain? Okay, that was his choice. This new me has its own choices to make, and by a strange coincidence those choices involve not knowing and not caring about this big number, whatever it is. That's what he wanted, that's what he got.
"Except this old self of mine tired to leave himself in control, leaving orders for me in the bit of my brain he locked off. Well, I don't want to know, and I don't want to hear them. That's my choice. I'm not going to be anybody's puppet, particularly not my own. [...]
"The old me is dead! [...] Killed himself! The dead shouldn't hang about trying t0 interfere with the living.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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