Failing Maths and My Other Crimes Quotes

“all is dead
but for the mosquitoes
singing
their blood song”
― Thabo Jijana, Failing Maths and My Other Crimes

“We are all orbits of some sort,
circling around the world we call our own,
and literature...
Literature is a compass;”
― Thabo Jijana, Failing Maths and My Other Crimes

“they had merely acquired
a shared affection for funerals
the way some people
love public holidays:”
― Thabo Jijana, Failing Maths and My Other Crimes

“Of course he was there, a removed audience
of my redemption songs from beyond the grave,
the way Kafka and his father continued to shadow-box,
long after they quit staring at each other
at the dinner table.”
― Thabo Jijana, Failing Maths and My Other Crimes

“now,
never mind
the boy who came out of that reading room
a new man,
safe in the hope of what was to come
in the summers of his life.”
― Thabo Jijana, Failing Maths and My Other Crimes

“I hope for my poetry to be empirical.
It shall suggest making love:
you will want the usual
in an unusual way.”
― Thabo Jijana, Failing Maths and My Other Crimes