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1 " What is important is the story. Because when we are all dust and teeth and kicked-up bits of skin - when we're dancing with our own skeletons - our words might be all that's left of us. "
― Alexandra Fuller , Scribbling the Cat
2 " You can't rewind war. It spools on, and on, and on, looping and jumping, distorted and cracked with age, and the stories contract until only the nuggets of hatred remain and no one can even remember, or imagine, why the war was organized in the first place. "
3 " She treated Vanessa and me as if we were visiting budgerigars that needed to be fed and then put somewhere dark for the night. "
― Alexandra Fuller , Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness
4 " You learn not to mourn every little thing out here, or you’d never, ever stop grieving. "
5 " It was a land of almost breathtaking beauty or of savage poverty; a land of screaming ghosts or of sun-flung possibilities; a land of inviting warmth or of desperate drought. How you see a country depends on whether you are driving through it, or living in it. How you see a country depends on whether or not you can leave it, if you have to. "
6 " The two of us lurching on an unlikely journey up a lonely road in the dark, thick beginning of a Mozambique night. As our pickup churned over rocks and through thick sand, the engine drowned out the night cries of the cicadas, the crickets, and the nightjars. Behind us, a plume of dust burned pink in our rear lights. "
7 " The doctor in Murare is old - old for anybody. He is especially old for a doctor and especially old for an African. But he doesn´t have the luxury of retirement to look forward to. There aren´t enough doctors in Africa. Those who choose to become doctors here don´t do it for the money or because thy want to do good. They do it because they have to heal, the way most people need to breath or eat or love. They can´t stop. As long as they are alive, they will never not be a doctor. They can be old, or alcoholic or burnt-out, but they will always be a doctor. "
― Alexandra Fuller
8 " There is only one time of absolute silence. Halfway between the dark of night and the light of morning, all animals and crickets and birds fall into a profound silence as if pressed quiet by the deep quality of the blackest time of night...This silence is how I know it is not yet dawn, nor is it the middle of the night, but it is the place of no-time, when all things sleep most deeply, when their guard is dozing "
― Alexandra Fuller , Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
9 " It was the time of night that precedes dawn and is without perspective or reason. It was the hour when regret and fear overwhelm hope and courage and when all that is ugly in us is magnified and when we are most panic-stricken by what we have lost, and what we have almost lost, and what we fear we might lose. "
10 " it is the deep-black-sky quiet time of night, which is the halfway time between the sun setting and the sun rising when even the night animals are quiet—as if they, like day animals, take a break in the middle of their work to rest. "
11 " But this is africa, so hardly anything is normal. "
12 " The schools wear the blank faces of war buildings, their windows blown blind by rocks or guns or mortars. Their plaster is an acne of bullet marks. The huts and small houses crouch open and vulnerable; their doors are flimsy pieces of plyboard or sacks hanging and lank. Children and chickens and dogs scratch in the red, raw soil and stare at us as we drive through their open, eroding lives. "
13 " Stand unshod upon it for the ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator,” Alan Paton wrote. “Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.”4 "
― Alexandra Fuller , Leaving Before the Rains Come
14 " They drink blood," he tells me."Who?""Leopards.""Why?""For fun. Leopard beer." He laughs. "
15 " There is a madman who lives on the road to Mkushi. Every full moon he comes out onto the tarmac and digs a deep trench across the road. Dad would like to find the madman and bring him back to the farm. 'Think what a strong bugger he is, eh?' 'Yes, but you could only get him to work when there was a full moon.' 'Which is twice as hard as any other Zambian. "
16 " Dad says, "At least death by mercenary is quicker.""Than what?""Death by aid. "
17 " How you see a country depends on whether you are driving through it, or live in it. How you see a country depends on whether or not you can leave it, if you have to. "
18 " Cowboy up, cupcake. "
― Alexandra Fuller , The Legend of Colton H. Bryant
19 " I don't think we have all the words in a single vocabulary to explain what we are or why we are. I don't think we have the range of emotion to fully feel what someone else is feeling. I don't think any of us can sit in judgment of another human being. We're incomplete creatures, barely scraping by. Is it possible--from the perspective of this quickly spinning Earth and our speedy journey from crib to coffin--to know the difference between right, wrong, good, and evil? I don't know if it's even useful to try. "
20 " This is not a full circle. It's Life carrying on. It's the next breath we all take. It's the choice we all make to get on with it. "
