Little Rot Quotes

“She had tried explaining it so many times, but he was hung up on the woman she used to be, and she was disappointed in the man he still was.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot

“Justice wasn’t something she looked for or believed in, and how useful would it be anyway? People didn’t understand that. They wanted revenge; they wanted people to be held accountable in a world where that just didn’t happen. It was like expecting a rotten tree to bear edible fruit. It was never going to give you that. It could give you other things, though, if you knew how to work the rot, if you weren’t afraid to touch it or use it. The rot could give you power.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot

“You could be so intimate, so familiar with someone’s skin and flesh and spirit, only to wake up one day and find that it had receded from you, suddenly, like a tide rushing back out into the sea, leaving you with dissolving foam and a damp heart.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot

“It wasn’t her assumption that annoyed him, it was the way she was continuing with it, looking at him as if he was a child trying to get away with a blatant lie, as if she knew him better than his own words were claiming. It felt like a violation, like she was reaching deep inside him and holding something and saying, This is you; you are only this, when his own voice had never even gone there.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot

“There are some places that you swear you'll never go back to because the place has become inseparable from the time; the there is the same as the then and you don't know how to deal with the space if it's inside a different slot of time.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot

“He was trying to blackmail me. I fucked him in my living room and I choked him till he stopped breathing. Is that what you wanted to hear, Sou? Are you happy now?”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot

“Men destroyed their families for a chance to touch her skin. Women wanted her and wanted to be her. She hadn’t been a trembling little girl in years.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot

“Never mind if she sat out on her balcony at home sometimes and fought the urge to find him again, wondered what they could be like if they hadn’t crashed together the way they had, wondered what could have been in another time line.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot

“Shame roared through Aima, clamoring and insistent. She had acted like someone who didn’t respect herself—what kind of woman allowed the driver to watch her do things like that? Only someone with no decency.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot

“Don’t start repressing your feelings. These emotions are necessary! They’re part of healing.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot

“maybe coming here was just going to layer more things onto him and make him so heavy that he would fold, crash under new and unexpected skins.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot

“Maybe she should have known that if he didn’t love God the way she did, then he couldn’t have been the real answer to her prayers. This could have all been a false faith, and now her eyes were being torn open. If there was gratitude to give God for that clarity, that release from a lie, Aima couldn’t quite find it in her to send it up. Right now, she didn’t want to talk to God. All she had was a plate full of bitter silence.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot

“She had wriggled into his arms and wrapped herself around him. “No one’s
ever hurt the people who hurt me,” she’d whispered, feeling horribly young.
Ahmed had held her tightly.
“Give me their names,” he’d said. She’d burst into tears then and he
murmured sounds until she cried herself to sleep. Souraya never gave him the
names.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot