A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali Quotes

“Propaganda is as powerful as heroin; it surreptitiously dissolves all capacity to think.”
― Gil Courtemanche, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali

“You see, each country has a colour, a smell, and also a contagious sickness. In my country the sickness is complacency. In France it's arrogance, and in the United States it's ignorance."

"What about Rwanda?"

"Easy power and impunity. Here, there's total disorder. To someone who has a little money or powere, everything that seems forbidden elsewhere looks permissible and possible. All it takes is to dare it. Someone who's simply a liar in my country can be a fraud artist here, and the fraud artist gets to be a big-time thief. Chaos and most of all poverty give him powers he wouldn't have elsewhere.”
― Gil Courtemanche, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali

“What is a country for someone who is neither a soldier nor a rabid patriot? A place of subtle affinities, an implicit understanding between the land and the foot that treads it. A familiarity, an agreement, a secret sharing with the colours and smells of it. The impression that the wind is with us and is sometimes carrying us. A renunciation that does not imply acceptance of the idiocy and inhumanity that the country nurtures.”
― Gil Courtemanche, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali

“People, he told her, are shaped somehow by their climate and the land they live in. Those who live by the sea are like the currents and tides; they go and come, and discover many shores. Their words and loves are like water that slips between one's fingers and is never still. Mountain people have fought the mountain to win their place. Once they have conquered it they protect their mountain, and others coming from far below in the valley risk being seen as enemies. Hill people take some time before greeting each other.”
― Gil Courtemanche, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali

“I'm dying of AIDS, but I'm dying by accident. I didn't choose, it was a mistake. I thought it was a white's or homosexual's or monkey's or druggie's sickness. I was born a Tutsi, it's written on my identity card, but I'm a Tutsi by accident. I didn't choose, that was a mistake too. My great-grandfather learned from the whites that the Tutsis were superior to the Hutus. He was Hutu. He did everything possible so his children and grandchildren would become Tutsis. So here I am, a Hutu-Tutsi and victim of AIDS, possessor of all the sicknesses that are going to destroy us. Look at me, I'm your mirror, your double who's rotting from the inside. I'm dying a bit earlier than you, that's all.”
― Gil Courtemanche, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali

“Beaucoup de gens dans ces pays ont la politesse ou la discrétion de mourir durant la nuit, comme s'ils ne voulaient pas dérager les vivants.”
― Gil Courtemanche, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali

“Gentille, I don't want to be a White who gives gifts," Valcourt said. "If you want to leave, I can help you get a visa, but you don't need to sleep with me. Even if it seems ridiculous, all I want is for you to love me a little."
He left without looking back, surprised by his own confession. Love was the only feeling he had ceased to hope for and he had been doing fairly nicely without it. And here he was asking for it.”
― Gil Courtemanche, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali

“The words of mere men are as naught against the Word of God.”
― Gil Courtemanche, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali