By Night the Mountain Burns Quotes

“I'm not a writer, or a teacher, or a priest. I don't know anyone on the island who could be described as a writer. It's an occupation, or a state, that none of us knew anything about. We've never heard of it before. The only people who ever knew how to write on the island were the teacher, the priest and the functionaries who worked in the governor's office, though we never knew what they came to do. What I have spoken of is what I experienced, heard and saw when I was a child. It has never been put down on writing before, because, as I said, I am not a writer; nobody on the island is. If this story becomes known, it will be because of some white people. They came to our island and wanted to know our folk tales, the stories we tell at night before going to sleep.”
― Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, By Night the Mountain Burns

“Do you know what colour the friendly nation’s flag was? I doubt the woman who dealt with the sailors on the boat knew. Back then, the women who were old enough to go and talk to the sailors didn’t know much about the flags of nations. Did the woman even know for sure which sailor she’d had the liaison with when she fell pregnant? She wouldn’t have recognised the flag and I doubt she’d have recognised the sailor. For one thing, white people all look alike, even those who live under different flags, never mind those who live under the same one. Coloured”
― Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, By Night the Mountain Burns

“With the disappearance of my friend, the son of my surrogate grandmother’s friend, the circumstances had changed and our stay would be cut short.”
― Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, By Night the Mountain Burns

“The waves crashed against the rocks with such ferocity they seemed angry about something, about the place they’d been sent to die.”
― Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, By Night the Mountain Burns

“A month went by and everyone still alive feared desperately for his or her life. Digestive matters became tremendously important. Everyone knew that the sickness began with a small stomach cramp and ended in a box made of floating wood under a mound of earth after some Latin from the Padre.”
― Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, By Night the Mountain Burns

“What if he were an incomer, someone who’d got lost on his way home and had taken shelter on our island but knew nobody? What if he’d arrived by sea, all alone, as we were told the images of the church saints had done, and that was why he didn’t know how to talk, just as the images didn’t? This was what I thought as a child, and I regret that grandfather never let us know more about him. And I never imagined that one day I’d be telling the story of my childhood. When”
― Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, By Night the Mountain Burns