Glory Quotes

“Words not only mattered but they were power. Words were muti. Words were weapons. Words were magic. Words were church. Words were wealth. Words were life.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“All my life I’d heard said this thing about tears—that they are a language, that they do indeed speak.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“The dead are not dead, glory to the ancestors!”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“Tholukuthi through these tales we learned there were in fact many untold narratives that were left out of the Seat of Power's tales of the nation, that were excluded from Jidada's great books of history. That the nation's stories of glory were far from being the whole truth, and that sometimes the Seat of Power's truths were actually half-truths and mistruths as well as deliberate erasures. Which in turn made us understand the importance not only of narrating our own stories, our own truths, but of writing them down as well so they were not taken from us, never altered, tholukuthi never erased, never forgotten.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“Tholukuthi with what she now knew of her mother's past, of April 18, 1983, Destiny finally understood, and with a gutting clarity, that all that time, her mother wasn't really ironing clothes or material but was rather ironing some parts of herself.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“If I don't write, then who will I blame when I wake up one day to find myself in the belly of a crocodile that calls itself History, that devours the stories of everyone else and goes on to speak for us?”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“She hadn't gone to war, had never held a gun in her life, and she'd rule. She didn't possess even a single testicle, and she'd rule. She was young, and she'd rule.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“I mean the terrible roads that kill people, the potholes, the broken sewer systems, the decrepit hospitals, the decrepit schools, the decrepit industrial sector, the decrepit rail system, or should I say a generally decrepit infrastructure.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“Yes, so I’m told by those who know about things that you give degrees over there and I’m surprised you haven’t thought to give me one yet like you don’t know who I am when everybody else is busy giving me all sorts of things—land, mines, businesses, whatever I want, I get.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“She’d learn too that not only were they breathing fiascoes with no love or respect whatsoever for the nation they purported to serve, yes, tholukuthi toads with no leadership, no ethics, no principles, no sense of justice, no compassion, no discipline, no honesty, no idea of what real service to the nation looked like, but they were also no better than the very oppressors they’d replaced. Still, knowing all these things about the Old Horse and the Seat of Power, was the First Femal worried? Disappointed? Heartbroken? Tholukuthi no.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“And I’ll tell you all right now that the one thing, if I’ve learned one useful thing in ruling and ruling and ruling, is that nowhere else does the power of any regime, no matter how tyrannical, lie than in the fear of the multitudes! I promise you once the governed lose their fear, then it’s absolutely game over for the regime!”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“These animals represented some of Jidada’s Chosen Ones, and were indeed proof of the Father of the Nation’s benevolence, for most of them had been made rich by His Excellency, if not directly, then through some kind of connection to him. They were proud recipients of gifts of land, businesses, tenders, government loans that didn’t need repaying, inheritors of confiscated farms, grantees of mines, industries, and all kinds of riches.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“Yessir, apparently while the children of the nation were busy doing in the Other Country what they'd never dare do in the Country Country, tholukuthi the Savior of the Nation too was busy doing what could only be done in the Country Country and not in the Other Country.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“And today they'll call the thing all sort of queer names, I've even heard it called a genocide. But I myself call it service.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“And then we watched, as if on cue, a bull charge Jidada’s most famous celebrity Prophet, lift him by the horns, and fling him, shrieking, so high up in the air it actually looked like he’d reach heaven. We roared and cheered in tremendous applause that said we were done with false prophets and false pastors and false religious leaders who fleeced us of our hard-earned moneys in the name of God, who connived with the Seat of Power to keep us oppressed by telling us who to vote for, by telling us the blatant lie that our leaders were selected by God, by telling us to stay away from politics.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory