51 Quotes by Aminatta Forna

War had the effect of encouraging people to try to stay alive. Poverty, too. Survival was simply too hard-won to be given up lightly.

[T]hose most precious memories are hidden in the safest place of all. Safe from fire or floods or war. In stories. Stories remembered, until they are ready to be told. Or perhaps simply ready to be heard.

He knows nothing about how this will all end, except that it will surely end. He tries to imagine himself into a future, somewhere past this point, but he cannot. There is nothing to do but to keep on existing, in this exact time and place. This is what hell must be like. Waiting without knowing. Not hell, but purgatory. Worse than hell.

Yet what use against the deceit of a state are the memories of a child?

How differently we behave in other peoples countries ... no sooner than we think we can get away with it, we do as we please. It doesn't require the breakdown of a social order. It takes a six-hour plane flight.

The reckless open their arms and topple into love, as do dreamers, who fly in their dreams without fear or danger. Those who know that all love must end in loss do not fall but rather cross slowly from the not knowing into the knowing.

The reckless open their arms & topple into love, as do dreamers who fly in their dreams without fear or danger. Those who know that all love must end in loss do not fall but rather cross slowly from the not knowing into the knowing.

But what is a legend if not a story so great it has survived the retelling of countless generations?

If you want to know a country, read its writers.