The Sankofa Book Club > The Sankofa Book Club's Quotes

“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

“I once heard that when fear takes possession of the heart of a person, it diminishes them”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“Do you not know that there is nothing the eye can see that can make it shed the tears of blood? Do you not know that there is no loss we cannot overcome?”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“The things my brother read shaped him; they became his visions. He believed in them. I have now come to know that what one believes often becomes permanent, and what becomes permanent can be indestructible.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“I'd heard someone say that the end of most things often bears a resemblance - even if faint - to their beginnings”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“English, although the official language of Nigeria, was a formal language with which strangers and non-relatives addressed you. It had the potency of digging craters between you and your friends or relatives if one of you switched to using it.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“He disliked English, not because they had invaded his country, but because of the effort required to understand their different languages and customs. At the same time, he was in no hurry for them to leave, for he admired them, most of the time, not for the modernity they were establishing but for the business opportunities they brought with them.”
― Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley