Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire > Bwesigye's Quotes

“People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.”
― James Baldwin

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Aunt Fostalina says when she first came to America she went to school during the day and worked nights at Eliot’s hotels, cleaning hotel rooms together with people from countries like Senegal, Cameroon, Tibet, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and so on. It was like the damn United Nations there, she likes to say.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“Because we were not in our country, we could not use our own languages, and so when we spoke our voices came out bruised.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“If Messenger would be to open his mouth right now, his voice would be a terrible wound.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“...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.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“If you are stealing something it’s better if it’s small and hideable or something you can eat quickly and be done with, like guavas. This way, people can’t see you with the thing to be reminded that you are a shameless thief and that you stole it from them, so I don’t know what the white people were trying to do in the first place, stealing not just a tiny piece but a whole country. Who can ever forget you stole something like that?”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“And when they asked us where we were from, we exchanged glances and smiled with the shyness of child brides. They said, Africa? We nodded yes. What part of Africa? We smiled. Is it that part where vultures wait for famished children to die? We smiled. Where the life expectancy is thirty-five years? We smiled? Is is there where dissidents shove AK-47s between women's legs? We smiled. Where people run about naked? We smiled. That part where they massacred each other? We smiled. Is it where the old president rigged the election and people were tortured and killed and a whole bunch of them put in prison and all, there where they are dying of cholera - oh my God, yes, we've seen your country; it's been on the news.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“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”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“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”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“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”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“[Jesus Christ] used to have blue eyes but I painted them brown like mine and everybody’s, to make him normal.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“Others with names like myths, names like puzzles, names we had never heard before: Virgilio, Balamugunthan, Faheem, Abdulrahman, Aziz, Baako, Dae-Hyun, Ousmane, Kimatsu. When it was hard to say the many strange names, we called them by their countries.
So how on earth do you do this, Sri Lanka?
Mexico, are you coming or what?
Is it really true you sold a kidney to come to America, India?
Guys, just give Tshaka Zulu a break, the guy is old, I'm just saying.
We know you despise this job, Sudan, but deal with it, man.
Come, Ethiopia, move, move, move; Israel, Kazakhstn, Niger, brothers, let's go!”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“It's not the lying itself that makes me feel bad but the fact that I'm here lying to my friends.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“I know that when she looks in the mirror she sees an ugly fat cow and that she hates her body because it’s not what it’s supposed to look like. This is why she is starving herself, which again her parents don’t know. I also know that if she cannot get out of eating she goes to the bathroom and vomits it all. It was all in her diary that I found hidden under the bed while I was cleaning her room; I read it because hidden things are meant to be discovered. I wonder how she lives, how she deals with the hunger, those long, terrible claws that dig and dig in your stomach until you can barely see, barely walk upright, barely think, and you would do anything, anything, for even just a crumb.”
― Bulawayo, NoViolet, We Need New Names

“Look at them leaving in droves despite knowing they will be welcomed with restraint in those strange lands because they do not belong, knowing they will have to sit on one buttock because they must not sit comfortable lest they be asked to rise and leave, knowing they will speak in dampened whispers because they must not let their voices drown those of the owners of the land, knowing they will have to walk on their toes because they must not leave footprints on the new earth lest they be mistaken for those who want to claim the land as theirs. Look at them leaving in droves, arm in arm with loss and lost, look at them leaving in droves.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“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.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“Look at the children of the land leaving in droves, leaving their own land with bleeding wounds on their bodies and shock on their faces and blood in their hearts and hunger in their stomachs and grief in their footsteps. Leaving their mothers and fathers and children behind, leaving their umbilical cords underneath the soil, leaving the bones of their ancestors in the earth, leaving everything that makes them who and what they are, leaving because it is no longer possible to stay. They will never be the same again because you cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“The problem with English is this: You usually can't open your mouth and it comes out just like that--first you have to think what you want to say. Then you have to find the words. Then you have to carefully arrange those words in your head. Then you have to say the words quietly to yourself, to make sure you got them okay. And finally, the last step, which is to say the words out loud and have them sound just right.
But then because you have to do all this, when you get to the final step, something strange has happened to you and you speak the way a drunk walks. And, because you are speaking like falling, it's as if you are an idiot, when the truth is that it's the language and the whole process that's messed up. And then the problem with those who speak only English is this: they don't know how to listen; they are busy looking at your falling instead of paying attention to what you are saying.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“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.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“They will never be the same again because you just cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“You want Change, today we'll show you Change!
Here's your democracy, your human rights, eat it, eat eat eat!”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“That crown on her head is very heavy, that's why she is smiling like that, smiling like she just ate a whole bunch of unripe guavas. It's heavy because it's made of gold, Godknows says.
I thought crowns were made of thorns. I saw a picture of it in the Bible, when they were killing Jesus, Sbho says.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“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.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“Heaven is boring. Didn't you see, in that picture book back when we used to go to school? It's just plain and white and there is not even any color and it's too orderly. Like there will be crazy prefects telling you all the time: Do thus, don't do that, where are your shoes, tuck in your shirt, shhh, God doesn't like it and will punish you, keep your voice low you'll wake the angels, go and wash, you are dirty, Bastard says.
Me, when I die I want to go where there's lots of food and music and a party that never ends and we're singing that Jobho song, Godknows says.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“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.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“Father comes home after many years of forgetting us, of not sending us money, of not loving us, not visiting us, not anything us, and parks in the shack, unable to move, unable to talk properly. unable to anything, vomiting and vomiting, Jesus, just vomiting and defecating on himself, and it smelling like something dead in there, dead and rotting, his body a black, terrible stick; I come in from playing Find bin Laden and he is there.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“Why do you want to see her thing? Don't you have yours to look at if you really want to see one?”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“At first it comes in small drops; that's how pee does, if somebody is watching, then it just won't come. I get more tiny drops, like I'm squeezing a lemon, so I close my eyes tight and concentrate.
Why are you taking so long? Forgiveness says, irritated-like, like she is somebody.
Leave her alone, is she peeing with your thing? Sbho says. Then when I'm beginning to think the pee is really not coming, it comes, so I turn around and give Forgiveness a talking eye that says Say something, uh-uh, uh-uh.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names