State of War Quotes

“It was a kind of sin, certainly, to forget—but it was not easy to remember, especially when names changed, languages changed. A century-old name held that century; when replaced, a hundred years were wiped out at one stroke. Amnesia set it; reality itself, being metamorphic, was affected.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“That to own things did not necessarily mean one belonged; that possession was no guarantee of control”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“To love was to regain the capacity to remember a world without names, to recall by virtue of the whorl above the beloved's knucklebones and to blue of the veins beneath the skin the unbearable fragility of mornings in this counrty, to find October odors trapped in the skinfolds between her toes along with the scent of talcum powder and soap and human sweat.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“A man could love only what he respected, not pitied.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“He saw clearly, immediately, that the man didn't care about the gift's value, didn't care about the gift even, but cared profoundly for the act of receiving as though the gift were a tribute, a confirmation of his self, his being, his reality. He found no pleasure in what he was taking but in the act of taking itself.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“God, if there' one, don't let all of us die (the house! the house!), allow one to survive and wear down the eternity of the dictator; if he lives to a hundred, let us last a hundred and ten, long enough to spit on his grave and drown his corpse in the lagoon of our contempt; if he lives to two hundred, let us survive two hundred and ten, just long enough to fertilize the gardens with the shit of his memory; if he's thinking of living through his sons' sons, allow us to outlive them all, just for the pleasure of being alive when he dies, before we bury him in the amnesia of our relief of his passing. After that, why, after that, there will be time for everything, time to lift this drink to one's lips, time even to turn our faces to the sun's fragrance in the unbearable fragility of this country's morning.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“You have never trusted us. We were trading with you before the Spaniards came: Your ancestors were buried in porcelain kilned in our land. Yet at the white man's word, you razed your districts and massacred our uncles. We'll never understand you.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“This is so typical of your people, confess it. We haven't really changed you, despite clothes and makeup. You'd rather carry on with suffering than move to rectify the order of things.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“Women were in communion with the gods, praying to the river, the forest spirits, the ancient stones, pouring out blood libations in evening rituals; healing the sick, foretelling the results of wars, quarrels, couplings, and the seasons. They walked with wisdom, dressed simply in an ankle-length piece of cloth wrapped and knotted about the hips, breasts left bare--until the Spaniards infected them with shame and made them hide their strength beneath layers of petticoats, half-chemises, drawers, skirts, blouses, shawls, and veils.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“The leaf-shaped boats bore unbelievable wares beneath his eyes--extravagant fruits and vegetables/, flowers of excessive colors, a thousand kind of fish, sometimes gold trinkets made by the northern mountain tribes, baroque pearls from the southern sea tribes, cloth of incredible patterns, and of course, the men and women, brown as aged wood, skin varnished by the sun, dark eyes that smoldered, he and all for not seeing potential locked in their environment of no winter; no drought; he cursed them for being existential, so immersed in the pleasure of living in this moment and this moment alone, this drift of boats down the current of a canal whose clear waters spoke of mountain rains, while he, Hans, old soul from Europe, had to think of the suture and sweat out all the possibilities of disaster before it even struck.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“Everyone spoke Spanish...She had learned the language in a year's time, forcing herself to confer genders on inanimate objects--a worldview that offended her sense of intimate unity with the universe. She had difficulty with male/female pronouns and was surprised that such distinctions should exist solely on sex and not upon class, status, aura of dignity, and respect, which were the criteria for pronoun distinctions in her native language.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“His knees had turned to water and he had had to sit down on the soft edge, his hands automatically taking her hot, dry hands while his mind, for some strange reason, instantly dredged up from his storehouse of memories his grandfather's tale of Magellan crossing a nameless sea in a still young world. He had seen, as he had looked into her eyes, the sea; depths beyond depths, and the tiny ships and white sails of grace moving along the rim of time. Almost without knowing it, without being aware that he was doing so, he kissed her fingertips one by one, as he told himself that this was what it meant, that to love was to regain the capacity to remember a world without names, to recall by virtue the whorl above the beloved's knucklebones and the blue of the veins beneath the skin the unbearable fragility of mornings in this country, to find October odors trapped in the skinfolds between her toes along with the scent of talcum powder and soap and human sweat. He moved then, without willing it, helplessly, and sank himself into the swamp of her delirium, as her fever broke and her bones melted in a cold sweat that drenched him and the bedsheets, soaking his chest, his legs, his armpits so that he thought he was making love to the monsoon and was himself dissolving into a needle spray of rain and the pungence of washed leaves and cleaned tree bark in a festival to end the dry season.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“It is the living nature of resistance. It exists in a constant flux, changing, breeding, metastasizing. All information about it's internal processes is rendered obsolete by revelation.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“He was convinced that poverty was the only way of life for a certain category of people; they would die without it.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“Better to exist without destiny, only to exist.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War

“Do not tempt fate by saying never. Never again this, never again that—for you can never be sure of never and that's the only thing you can be sure of.”
― Ninotchka Rosca, State of War