Quotessence
Home / Authors / Alexandra Fuller Books
Alexandra Fuller

Alexandra Fuller Books

Author

Related Quotes

“But his body, so cold, so unrelentingly unmoving was beginning to belong back to Earth, a block of perfect marble into which, even now, I tried to press my own life, exhaling, exhaling, exhaling. It's fruitless, you know it's fruitless, but you do it anyway, entreating your dead son to return to this perfectly usable thing, this beautiful, still body, so umblemished, so strong, so midstride.”

LoveDeathGriefMourningDeath Of A Loved OneHopelessness
Book:Fi: A Memoir of My Son
Create image

“The doctor in Murare is old - old for anybody. He is especially old for a doctor and especially old for an African. But he doesn´t have the luxury of retirement to look forward to. There aren´t enough doctors in Africa. Those who choose to become doctors here don´t do it for the money or because thy want to do good. They do it because they have to heal, the way most people need to breath or eat or love. They can´t stop. As long as they are alive, they will never not be a doctor. They can be old, or alcoholic or burnt-out, but they will always be a doctor.”

CallingHealAfricaDoctorZimbabweRhodesia
Author:Alexandra Fuller
Create image

“The schools wear the blank faces of war buildings, their windows blown blind by rocks or guns or mortars. Their plaster is an acne of bullet marks. The huts and small houses crouch open and vulnerable; their doors are flimsy pieces of plyboard or sacks hanging and lank. Children and chickens and dogs scratch in the red, raw soil and stare at us as we drive through their open, eroding lives.”

ChildrenWarAfricaZimbabweDescriptiveRhodesia
Book:Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
Create image

“But if I knew any of this back then, I didn't yet have the vocabulary for that knowledge. And perhaps because of that, without intending to do so, I had continued the pattern of some of the men, and most of the women, in my family, reaching s far back as we had memory. We were careless, and shiftless, and unthinking. We left our ancestral homes, we birthed and sometimes buried our children in far-flung places, and we started afresh over and over. We cared for land, but too often it wasn't our land to care for.”

Immigrant ExperienceExpatsImmigrant Parents
Book:Leaving Before the Rains Come
Create image

“There is a madman who lives on the road to Mkushi. Every full moon he comes out onto the tarmac and digs a deep trench across the road. Dad would like to find the madman and bring him back to the farm. 'Think what a strong bugger he is, eh?' 'Yes, but you could only get him to work when there was a full moon.' 'Which is twice as hard as any other Zambian.”

Zambia
Book:Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
Create image

“There is only one time of absolute silence. Halfway between the dark of night and the light of morning, all animals and crickets and birds fall into a profound silence as if pressed quiet by the deep quality of the blackest time of night...This silence is how I know it is not yet dawn, nor is it the middle of the night, but it is the place of no-time, when all things sleep most deeply, when their guard is dozing”

NightSilenceDarkness
Book:Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
Create image

“People who disagree with His Excellency, the President for Life and 'Chief of Chiefs,' are frequently found to be the victims of car crashes (their bodies mysteriously riddled with bullets); or dead in their beds of heart attacks (their bodies mysteriously riddled with bullets); or the recipients of some not-quite-fresh seafood (their bodies mysteriously riddled with bullets).”

PeopleHeartBodyFoundPresidentCarBedVictimTyrannyChiefsDisagreeCrashBulletsSeafoodHeart AttackCar Crash
Book:Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
Create image

“I don't think we have all the words in a single vocabulary to explain what we are or why we are. I don't think we have the range of emotion to fully feel what someone else is feeling. I don't think any of us can sit in judgment of another human being. We're incomplete creatures, barely scraping by. Is it possible--from the perspective of this quickly spinning Earth and our speedy journey from crib to coffin--to know the difference between right, wrong, good, and evil? I don't know if it's even useful to try.”

IfsThinkingKnowsFeelsTryingHumansFeelingsEarthEvilDifferencesHuman BeingsEmotionJourneyPerspectiveCreaturesJudgmentRangeGood And EvilVocabularySpinningIncompleteCoffinsScrapingRange Of Emotions
Author:Alexandra Fuller
Create image

“The land itself, of course, was careless of its name. It still is. You can call it what you like, fight all the wars you want in its name. Change its name altogether if you like. The land is still unblinking under the African sky. It will absorb white man's blood and the blood of African men, it will absorb blood from slaughtered cattle and the blood from a woman's birthing with equal thirst. It doesn't care.”

IfsMenWantStillsWarCareFightingCoursesNamesWhiteBloodSkyLandEqualThirstWhite ManCarelessCattleBirthingName Changes
Book:Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: Picador Classic
Create image

“Once, I discovered the skulls of two impala rams, their horns locked into an irreversible figure-of-eight; the two animals had been trapped in combat, latched to each other during the battle of the rut. The harder they had pulled to escape from each other, the more intractably stuck they were, until they had fallen exhausted, to their knees, in an embrace of hatred that had killed them both.”

TwoAnimalFiguresBattleHatredHarderEmbraceEightStuckKneesFallenCombatLockedTrappedExhaustedHornsSkullsRutsIrreversibleRams
Book:Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
Create image

“One of the things about being raised British in Africa is that you get this double whammy of toughness. The continent in place itself made you quite tough. And then you've got this British mother whose entire being rejects 'coddling' in case it makes you too soft. So there's absolutely nothing standing between you and a fairly rough experience.”

MadeMotherCasesToughStandingRaisedBritishRejectsRoughContinentsAbsolutely NothingToughnessSelf Made
Author:Alexandra Fuller
Create image