Agaat Quotes

“...a butterfly is like the soul of a person, it dries out in captivity.”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat: A Novel

“First smile!! An unseasonal little shower of rain fell here, and a lot of butterflies drowned, so we put them in the sun and they came back to life, and flew up and then Agaat SMILED!”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat: A Novel

“Everything is important. To the smallest insect, even the mouldering tree, the deepest stone in the drift.”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat: A Novel

“Nature is subtle and complex.”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat: A Novel

“In a state of pseudo-death you restore your substance.”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat: A Novel

“Does a mirror preserve everything that has been reflected in it? Is there a record of light, thin membranes compressed layer upon layer that one has to ease apart with the finger-tips so that the colors don't dissipate, so that the moments don't blot and the hours don't run together into inconsequential splotches? So that a song of preserved years lies in your palm, a miniature of your life and times, with every detail meticulous in clear, chanting angel-fine enamel, as on the old manuscripts, at which you can peer through a magnifying glass and marvel at so much effort? So many tears for nothing? For light? For bygone moments?”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat: A Novel

“..we all have to do things in this life that we don't like..”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat: A Novel

“Marriage is holy and it's private.”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat: A Novel

“Nobody can be so beautiful from the outside and so hollow from inside. Not even in a third-rate novel.”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat: A Novel

“After all the years, after everything that you'd had to endure, after everything that you'd undertaken, however good or bad, long after you'd given up all hope, the reward.”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat: A Novel

“And I will close my eyes and prepare myself so that they can unscrew my head and allow the map to slip into my lacunae. So that I can be filled and braced from the inside and fortified for the voyage. Because without my world inside me I will contract and congeal, more even than I am now, without speech and without actions and without any purchase upon time.”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat: A Novel

“Well, I am something, Ma, you hissed, I am not nothing, I am somebody and I know what I want from life and I know what to do to get it. I will provide for myself.”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat: A Novel

“..did i think i was god that i had to lie and take it did i think then i was a mountain or a hill or a ridge and who told me that and who decided stones had no rights for stones can waste away from being denied from being abused and who decided who is the ploughed and who ploughs and why did i not get up and why not go away and what would have happened if i had resisted..”
― Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat: A Novel

“die hoek v.d. hoekom die waar v.d. waarom die moed v.d. moeder die vadoek v.d. vader & die bloed die bloed v.d. bitter bloekom”
― Marlene van Niekerk, Agaat

“It’s the first time in my life that I understand it like this, the impersonal unity of all living things. It doesn’t matter who is who. The speaker and the listener. The shell and the sea, the mother cat and the human hand that stirs her blind litter, the wind and the soughing pine, the dry drift and the flood. It’s one energy. We are one, Agaat and I, I feel it stir in my navel.”
― Marlene van Niekerk, Agaat