The Sand People Quotes

“I was neither a victim nor a prisoner, even though I lived like one, and there were days when the loneliness and loss tore at my heart. My voice, my song, my essence were mine and mine alone.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“There wasn’t enough water left in his body for real tears, just as there wasn’t a drop of hope left in his soul.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“Today, there was no time for the old rituals and the old ways; there was barely time in each day to kiss your son good morning and your wife goodbye as you rushed out to the shop, trying to make a living, before trudging home with nothing to show after you’d paid the taxi fares and bought the milk for Klein Ben’s porridge …”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“A new trunk had grown, covering the scar of the burn with thick new growth. Not hiding it, no, for the past could never be hidden, but embracing it with new hope and new dreams so that both past and present formed one unified trunk that continued to shelter our people as we lived on in the shadows of the great Blue Mountains that had seen an eternity and stood ready to face another.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“Ah, Letty,’ he said, bowing his head. ‘You were never lost. You were only following your dream.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“This prejudice is like a mosquito: I must kill it immediately. If I wait and hope it disappears, I’ll be bled dry by a million irritating bites.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“She was running for all those ordinary, fragile souls whose bodies had been shamed like hers. In them, she had found herself. And so she ran for them, for those who, like her, had found comfort only in cut-out posters of clownfish. Now they had a different poster they could dream about: an athlete, an international star, her body neither fully boy nor fully girl, but simply the body of Johanna Venter, Girl Wonder.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“I know this one truth: some people, ignorant of the miracles love performs, might think I am disabled, trapped for a lifetime in a useless body over which I have so little control. But Mama knows, and now Papa knows, too: mermaids are real; they exist to bring love and laughter, happiness and hope into a world that has forgotten that miracles happen in the most magical ways. And I am a mermaid.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“These humans, these creatures who play at kindness, are each ruled by wounds that, when triggered, make them the opposite of kind. Often, they justify their actions with excuses as shallow as a rain puddle, unable to see that I have my own kind of beauty simply because I’m a mermaid.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“I’ve come to understand that in this world, there are those who, in their untouchable privilege, believe that they’re entitled to a perfect life, and the perfect life they get is because they’re so deserving, so good, and true. Their crippled souls are blinded by a naivety that can only understand their life, their pain, their truth. These are the ones who look at us—the mermaids, the fairies, the unicorns—and see only that we don’t fit into their little box of what beauty and truth are. They make token gestures of kindness that are not about what we need, but about what they need to look good in their own eyes, and in the eyes of the world they have moulded to their shallow, selfish limits, leaving us—the magical, the different, the dreamers—feeling less than them; feeling unheard, unseen, and unloved.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“In beauty lies hidden pain; in pain, hidden freedom.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid of the vast silence.” | Kaggen said. “We all must walk the lands of dust until the seventh silence comes, and then we leave, our footsteps blown away on the wind, carried into the hearts of our children and our children’s children.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“He’d answered the call of this stark and strange land: a country, his father had once told him, that lived in bold colours and loud noises, cradling the most profound mysteries in her soul even as the secrets of a dark past shaded her heart.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“Throughout the ages, people have feared me. Even in this modern world, where technology masquerades as magic and reason rules superstition, they shudder when they talk of me. Some call me La Meurte; others, The Grim Reaper. Most whisper only my true name: Death. Lost in their fear, no one sees the grace in my eternal silence.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories