9 Quotes by Maryse Condé

Who laughs in front of a gun? Only those of our species.

There was no denying the fact that the death of sugarcane was sounding the knell for something else in the country. What can we call it?

There was one thing, however, that I didn’t know: evil is a gift received at birth. There’s no acquiring it. Those of us who have not come to this world armed with spurs and fangs are losers in every combat.

It's true I have a stay-at-home nature. I abhor physical exercise (except for making love, of course). I've always believed that sport should be left to the dunces.

...if you've eaten your fill since childhood, you've plenty of time to think of love and nothing else.

We were in Africa". I know, I know. What were we doing there? We must have lived, somehow. Eaten, slept, raised children? Was it so savage and horrible that it is netter forgotten? Who can tell me? No one. Because nobody knows and everyone takes for granted what they've been told.

The truth always arrive too late because it walks slower than lies. Truth crawls at a snail's pace.

Life is too kind to men, whatever their color.

They hanged my mother. I watched her body swing from the lower branches of a silk cotton tree. She had committed a crime for which there is no pardon. She had struck a white man. She had not killed him, however. In her clumsy rage she had only managed to gash his shoulder