26 Quotes by Tsitsi Dangarembga

What it is,” she sighed, “to have to choose between self and security.

How does a daughter know that she feels appropriately towards the woman who is her mother? Yes, it was difficult to know what to do with Mai, how to conceive her. I thought I hated her fawning, but what I see I hated is the degree of it. If she was fawning, she was not fawning enough. She diluted it with her spitefulness, the hopeless clawing of a small cornered spirit towards what was beyond it. And if she had spirit, it was not great enough, being shrunk by the bitterness of her temper.

We co-existed in peaceful detachment

You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your perception...you see what is, where most people see what they expect.

He says he wants to go back to Germany,' Nyasha confides. 'As soon as he's finished his doctorate,' she goes on, as though both completion of his research and departure are imminent. You realize she does not know Cousin-Brother-in-Law is mulling another thesis because he is no longer interested in his subject. You are surprised your in-law is behaving in the way you expect your own black men to do, first of all by being so indecisive and then by not telling his wife.

What I wanted was to get away. But the moon was too far beyond, and there were white bits under me, where the flesh was shredded off and the bone gleamed that famed ivory, and those below cowered and, if they were not quick enough, were spattered in blood. Then came the jolt, as of a fall, and I saw the leg was caught in an ungainly way in the smaller branches of a mutamba tree, the foot hooked, long like that infamous fruit.

It’s bad enough . . . when a country gets colonized, but when the people do as well! That’s the end, really, that’s the end.

She thinks she is white,' they used to sneer, and that was as bad as a curse.

if someone smiles at you it does not mean they’re happy. It just means “I think that if I smile I might get out of this alive!” [http://brickmag.com/interview-tsitsi-...]