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1 " This is one of the consequences of a superior education, you see. In this independent, hundred-per-cent-empowered and fully and totally indigenous blacker-than-black country, a superior education is one that the whites would value, and as whites do not value local languages at the altar of what the whites deem supreme. So it was in colonial times, and so it remains, more than thirty years later. "
― Petina Gappah , The Book of Memory
2 " I had never seen so many books gathered in a single space as I saw in that room. I felt less afraid when I thought of all the other people who seemed to have had harder lives than mine. I disappeared completely to occupy the world of whatever book I was reading. "
3 " Later, as she drove the children to school, she thought how worn the grooves were along which they moved their quarrels. She could feel herself saying all the clichéd phrases of a thousand injured women before her, but she could never stop herself. - ‘The Negotiated Settlement "
― Petina Gappah , An Elegy for Easterly: Stories
4 " Each heartbreak is a little death, all the same. "
5 " Like the worthless dogs that are his countrymen, my husband believed that his penis was wasted if he was faithful to just one woman. - At the Sound of the Last Post "
6 " It may well be that there will be this socialism, Juliana,’ she said, ‘but I can tell you right now that no amount of socialism will make my madam was her own underwear.’ - ‘Aunt Juliana’s Indian "
7 " A voice reminds us that the land is ours, it will not be taken from us again; the country will never be a colony again. - ‘Something Nice from London "
8 " They had become a nation of traders. "
9 " [L]ife is one big jest at the expense of humanity. - ‘The Mupondawana Dancing Champion "
10 " Wafa Wanaka, our elders say. Not only does this mean that death is the ultimate peace, it also means that we are not to speak ill of the dead. Once a person has crossed over to the real of the spirits, he takes his transgressions with him, and we speak only of the good. - 'Something Nice from London "
11 " Fame is an elastic concept, especially in a place like this, where we all know the smell of each other’s armpits. - ‘The Mupondawana Dancing Champion "
12 " When we talk of fate, when we talk of a fatalistic vision of human experience, what we mean is that the most important forces that shape human lives are out of human control. "
13 " There is only one illness that pushes both the well-wheeled and the un-wheeled to seek out the prophet. It is the big disease with the little name, the sickness that no one dies of, the disease whose real name is unspoken, the sickness that speaks its presence through the pink redness of lips, the slipperiness of hair, through the whites of the eyes whiter than nature intended. "
14 " ...life is one big jest at the expense of humanity. "
― Petina Gappah
15 " She looked around for something with which to cut the cord. There was nothing, and the baby almost slipped from her hands. Through a film of tears she chewed on Martha’s flesh, closing her mind to the taste of blood, she chewed and tugged on the cord until the baby was free. She wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand. The baby cried, she held it to her chest, and felt an answering rise in her chest. – ‘An Elegy for Easterly "
16 " There is no happy medium to our food; it is either overcooked or undercooked, or it has too much salt or not enough, or there is not enough oil in the fried vegetables or there is so much that you almost fear that America will invade. "
17 " It will not be possible for me to escape the past. But if I go back there, it will only be to find ways to make rich my present. To accept that there are no villains in my life, just broken people, trying to heal, stumbling in darkness and breaking each other...To stop living what has been, until now, this pale imitation of life. "
