11 Quotes by Andrea Levy

For, like the wind, the sun, or the flowing river, like a soaring man-of-war or a beetle under a stone, like a spider at a web or a crab scuttling sideways across a shore, Nimrod was free.

No, no, no, no. Don't get carried away, man. One thaw is not the summer.

There are some words that once spoken will split the world in two. There would be the life before you breathed them and then the altered life after they'd been said. They take a long time to find, words like that. They make you hesitate. Choose with care. Hold on to them unspoken for as long as you can just so your world will stay intact.

He looked so pained that I dreamed of taking his hands and making him dance

Describe snow to someone who’s lived in the desert. Depict the colour blue for a blind man. Almost impossible to fashion the word.

The very notion of Great Britain’s “greatness” is bound up with Empire,′ the cultural theorist, Stuart Hall, once wrote: ‘Euro-scepticism and littel Englander nationalism could hardly survive if people understood whose sugar flowed through English blood, and rotted English teeth.

There are some words that once spoken will split the world in two. There would be the life before you breathed them and then the altered life after they’d been said. They take a long time to find, words like that. They make you hesitate. Choose with care.

Australia smelt of apples. Ripe, green, crisp apples. A smell so sharp and sweet it made my teeth tingle.

My beloved son Thomas did caution, when first I set out to flow this tale upon the world, that although they may not be felt like a fist or a whip, words have a power that can nevertheless cower even the largest man to gibbering tears.