8 Quotes by Véronique Tadjo

Here there are no griots, only poets. You think that you are leading an extraordinary life and that people see you as you would like them to. You adorn yourself with your writing. It becomes your identity, your bread and butter, and your reason for living. You begin to believe in what people say. You become locked up in your creation, become submerged in words, and sentences suffocate you in the solitude of your retreat. They make you forget the blood and the dust.

Indeed, I too would have loved to write one of those serene stories with a beginning and an end. But as you know only too well, it is never like that. Lives mingle, people tame one another and part. Destinies are lost.

If you want to love ​ Do so ​ To the ends of the earth​ With no shortcuts ​ Do so​ As the crow flies.​ Veronique Tadjo, As the crow flies​

Oui, se souvenir. Témoigner. C'est ce qui nous reste pour combattre le passé et restaurer notre humanité.

You should listen to those whose voices remain unheard although the wisdom they carry is shaped by their closeness to the earth. No refined language but the pace of life at a gallop refashioned outmoded images, well-worn phrases, and ways of thinking that are out of date.

We must perform cleansing rites. Make the necessary sacrifices. We must replant our huge trees that have been uprooted, replenish our sacred forests that have been decimated.

In the play, I represent the people. My hands are stretched in the form of a cross. Symbolically. The hero is fighting for me. Fighting against the monarch.

I think of my country, far away, and my eyes open beyond space.