Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight Quotes

“How you see a country depends on whether you are driving through it, or live in it. How you see a country depends on whether or not you can leave it, if you have to.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“This is not a full circle. It's Life carrying on. It's the next breath we all take. It's the choice we all make to get on with it.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“The land itself, of course, was careless of its name. It still is. You can call it what you like, fight all the wars you want in its name. Change its name altogether if you like. The land is still unblinking under the African sky. It will absorb white man's blood and the blood of African men, it will absorb blood from slaughtered cattle and the blood from a woman's birthing with equal thirst. It doesn't care.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“But I plucked a new, different, worldly soul for myself -- maybe a soul I found in the spray thrown up by the surge of that distant African river as it plummets onto black rocks and sends up into the sun a permanent arc of a rainbow.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“Once, I discovered the skulls of two impala rams, their horns locked into an irreversible figure-of-eight; the two animals had been trapped in combat, latched to each other during the battle of the rut. The harder they had pulled to escape from each other, the more intractably stuck they were, until they had fallen exhausted, to their knees, in an embrace of hatred that had killed them both. When I picked up the skulls to add to my growing collection of what Vanessa called "Bobo's smelly pile," the hooked horns fell away from each other and the story of the impalas' death struggle was undone.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“But this is africa, so hardly anything is normal.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“Well-bred' ensured buckled noses, high-arched feet, a predisposition to madness, and ... an innate belief in our own unquestioning superiority.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“There is a madman who lives on the road to Mkushi. Every full moon he comes out onto the tarmac and digs a deep trench across the road. Dad would like to find the madman and bring him back to the farm. 'Think what a strong bugger he is, eh?' 'Yes, but you could only get him to work when there was a full moon.' 'Which is twice as hard as any other Zambian.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“All of us are mad and then she adds,smiling, but I'm the only one with a certificate to prove it”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“The schools wear the blank faces of war buildings, their windows blown blind by rocks or guns or mortars. Their plaster is an acne of bullet marks. The huts and small houses crouch open and vulnerable; their doors are flimsy pieces of plyboard or sacks hanging and lank. Children and chickens and dogs scratch in the red, raw soil and stare at us as we drive through their open, eroding lives.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“So happy to be home I feel as if I’m swimming in syrup.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

“She is gently manic, in a pottering sort of way.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“We drink the barely cool locally brewed Mosi from the leaky mildew-smelling fridge, keeping an eye out for UFOs, unidentified floating objects, in the bottles.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“Dad says, "At least death by mercenary is quicker."
"Than what?"
"Death by aid.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“They drink blood," he tells me.
"Who?"
"Leopards."
"Why?"
"For fun. Leopard beer." He laughs.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“It was easy to leave Karoi. Karoi had always felt like a train station platform, a flat place from which we hoped to leave at any moment for somewhere more interesting and picturesque.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

“The world looks better when your belly is full, brighter and more hopeful. After”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

“In the hot, slow time of day when time and sun and thought slow to a dragging, shallow, pale crawl, there is the sound of heat. The grasshoppers and crickets sing and whine. Drying grass crackles. Dogs pant. There is the sound of breath and breathing, of an entire world collapsed under the apathy of the tropics.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

“There is only one time of absolute silence. Halfway between the dark of night and the light of morning, all animals and crickets and birds fall into a profound silence as if pressed quiet by the deep quality of the blackest time of night...This silence is how I know it is not yet dawn, nor is it the middle of the night, but it is the place of no-time, when all things sleep most deeply, when their guard is dozing”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“The flowers for the wedding have been done by a drunken homosexual from the Copperbelt. His flower arrangements, his way of life, his entire philosophy, everything about the man is centered upon the theme of disguise. My wedding bouquet is made from wild African weeds, not flowers. The stagnant green pool is hidden with brightly colored balloons. White building sand covers the cow and horse shit in the paddock where Charlie and I exchange vows. The trees (bare-limbed in midwinter) are festooned with crepe-paper-covered hula hoops.

Dad puts all the hula hoops over his body, one on top of the other. He says, “You miserable buggers want light. I bring you the Timothy Donald Fuller Electricity Supply Commission.” He lights a match and sets himself on fire.

Mum, singing and arms raised in triumph, shouts, “Olé!”

Dad is extinguished with a bottle of champagne by an alert, alarmed American guest.

I couldn’t be more thoroughly married.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“Things get worse. When Mum is drugged and sad and singing tunes from the Roger Whittaker album every night, that is one thing. It is a contained, soggy madness, which does little more than humidify the dry, unspoken grief we all feel. But then the outside world starts to join in and has a nervous breakdown all its own, so that it starts to get hard for me to know where Mum’s madness ends and the world’s madness begins. It’s like being on a roundabout, spinning too fast. If I look inward, at my feet, or at my hands clutching the red-painted bar, I can see clearly, if narrowly, where I am in spite of a sick feeling in my stomach and a fear of looking up. But when I pluck up the courage to look up, the world is a terrifying, unhinged blur and I cannot determine whether it is me, or the world, that has come off its axis.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

“The”
― Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight