NoViolet Bulawayo Quotes

#1. If these walls could talk, the buildings would stutter, wouldn't remember their names.

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#2. As for the coldness, I have never seen it like this. I mean, coldness that makes like it wants to kill you, like it's telling you, with its snow, that you should go back to where you came from.

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#3. And the jobs we worked, Jesus - Jesus - Jesus, the jobs we worked. Low-paying jobs. Backbreaking jobs. Jobs that gnawed at the bones of our dignity, devoured the meat, tongued the marrow.

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#4. Look at that drum of a stomach, it's like he has swallowed a country.

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#5. When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky.

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#6. You pray and pray and pray and nothing changes, like for example I prayed for a real house and good clothes and a bicycle and things for a long, long, time, and none of it happened, not even one little thing, which is how I know that all this praying for Father is just people playing.

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#7. He doesn't tell Aunt Fostalina she looks good, like I've heard other people do; he tells her she looks like sunrise.

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#8. And the women spread their ntsaroz and sit on one side, the men on the other, like they are two different rivers that are not supposed to meet.

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#9. And so the spirits just gazed at us with eyes milked dry of care.

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#10. I think the reason they are my relatives now is they are from my country too - it's like the country has become a real family since we are in America, which is not our country

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#11. When somebody talks about home, you have to listen carefully so you know exactly which one the person is referring to.

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#12. Sometimes I don't even bother coming up with proper words for conversation. It's not necessary; some people are content to just talk to themselves.

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#13. It's not the lying itself that makes me feel bad but the fact that I'm here lying to my friends.

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#14. Look at them leaving in droves, arm in arm with loss and lost, look at hem leaving in droves.

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#15. That's what you do in America: you smile at people you don't know and you smile at people you don't even like and you smile for no reason.

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#16. I always feel guilty around sick people because there is nothing I can do for them.

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#17. If Messenger would be to open his mouth right now, his voice would be a terrible wound.

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#18. In America we saw more food than we had seen in all our lives and we were so happy we rummaged through the dustbins of our souls to retrieve the stained, broken pieces of God.

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#19. You want Change, today we'll show you Change!
Here's your democracy, your human rights, eat it, eat eat eat!

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#20. He speaks with this tone like he owns things, but we know that even the baton stick in his hands is not his, that if he weren't on this street he'd be nothing.

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#21. [Jesus Christ] used to have blue eyes but I painted them brown like mine and everybody's, to make him normal.

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#22. There are times, though, that no matter how much food I eat, I find the food does nothing for me, like I am hungry for my country and nothing is going to fix that

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#23. Leaving your country is like dying, and when you come back you are like a ghost returning to earth, roaming around with missing gaze in your eyes

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#24. I used to be very afraid of graveyards and death and such things, but not anymore. There is just no sense of being afraid when you live so near the graves; it would be like the tongue fearing the teeth.

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#25. I say good-bye to Kate, but she doesn't respond, which is how come I know that she is mad at me, but I don't really care because it's not like I stole her guavas. And

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#26. Why do you want to see her thing? Don't you have yours to look at if you really want to see one?

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#27. We just eat a lot of guavas because its the only way to kill our hunger, and when it comes to defecating, we get in so much pain it becomes an almost impossible task, like you are trying to give birth to a country.

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#28. If I bring forth what is inside me, what I bring forth will save me.

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#29. Because we were not in our country, we could not use our own languages, and so when we spoke our voices came out bruised.

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#30. Further and further we go, and the sun keeps ironing us and ironing us and ironing us.

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#31. I am starting to talk fast now, and I have to remember to slow down because when I get excited, I start to sound like myself and my American accent goes away.

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#32. We're hungry but we're together and we're at home and everything is sweeter than dessert.

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#33. Okay, A as in apple - Not apple. A as in anus, it's a different sound.

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