108 Quotes by Ishmael Beah

I was sad to leave, but I was also pleased to have met people outside of Sierra Leone. Because if I was to get killed upon my return, I knew that a memory of my existence was alive somewhere in the world.

Why was it that those who were about to shatter your lives always demanded order from you, when such directives were invariably a prelude to chaos?

He didn’t like remembering such things, but by now he was used to the way life was punctuated by such moments, which sent hooks into parts of the past one might prefer to forget.

Poverty has a great appetite for eating one’s dignity, but Elimane was one of those people who fought to keep his, even when that was the only battle he was winning.

The traders standing nearby, or really most anyone doing just well enough to pay for the services of people like him, needed to be reassured that those they were considering hiring were in a state of sufficient wretchedness that they could be paid as little as possible for their labor, and never succeed enough to pull themselves up from that state. Thus, the boss men reassured themselves of their own importance. Pull-down-and-keep-down syndrome was how Elimane thought of it.

Those who searched the day for something to eat were not interested in documents, sensitive or not.

Every Independence Day since Khoudi could remember, the protests had grown, as people had woken to the irony of celebrating freedoms that existed only on paper.

We walked into the arms of the forest...

Now the red caps scanned the crowd for whoever might be eyeing them displeasingly. And yet if you turned away, this might also be interpreted as a sign of disrespect. It was hard to know how, or where, to look. No one with eyes, in other words, was safe