Alexandra Fuller Quotes & Sayings

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

And for the majority of the country, Freedom did not include access to the sidewalks, the best schools and hospitals, decent farming land or the right to vote. It now seems completely clear to me, looking back, that when a government talks about "fighting for Freedom" almost every Freedom you can imagine disappears for ordinary people and expands limitlessly for a handful of people in power. — Alexandra Fuller

But the pathos and the gift of life is that we cannot know which will be our defining heartbreak, or our most victorious joy. — Alexandra Fuller

In general, I almost always watch foreign films. — Alexandra Fuller

I was deliberately southern African. Not in a good or easy way. There is no getting around the fact that there had been so much awful violence to get me here; my people had engaged in such terrible acts of denial and oppression; I so obviously did not look Africa; and yet here I still was. — Alexandra Fuller

You learn not to mourn every little thing out here, or you'd never, ever stop grieving. — Alexandra Fuller

The problem with most people," Dad said once, not necessarily implying that I counted as most people, but not discounting the possibility either, "is that they want to be alive for as long as possible without having any idea whatsoever how to live. — Alexandra Fuller

The world looks better when your belly is full, brighter and more hopeful. After — Alexandra Fuller

But deep down I always knew there is no way to order chaos. It's the fundamental theory at the beginning and end of everything; it's the ultimate law of nature. There's no way to win against unpredictability, to suit up completely against accidents. — Alexandra Fuller

The odd small goat, surprised by so much unaccustomed water, died from disgust. — Alexandra Fuller

I love my mother so much, because I see the whole of her. — Alexandra Fuller

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

What is important is the story. Because when we are all dust and teeth and kicked-up bits of skin - when we're dancing with our own skeletons - our words might be all that's left of us. — Alexandra Fuller

Well-bred' ensured buckled noses, high-arched feet, a predisposition to madness, and ... an innate belief in our own unquestioning superiority. — Alexandra Fuller

What did I know about the fifty-five (give or take) countries of Africa? I carried within me one deep personal thread of one small part of it, and it had changed and colored everything, — Alexandra Fuller

Cowboy up, cupcake. — Alexandra Fuller

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

I always knew mum loved me - tough, look-after-yourself love, as if she knew she wouldn't always be there. — Alexandra Fuller

People who disagree with His Excellency, the President for Life and 'Chief of Chiefs,' are frequently found to be the victims of car crashes (their bodies mysteriously riddled with bullets); or dead in their beds of heart attacks (their bodies mysteriously riddled with bullets); or the recipients of some not-quite-fresh seafood (their bodies mysteriously riddled with bullets). — Alexandra Fuller

I don't think we have all the words in a single vocabulary to explain what we are or why we are. I don't think we have the range of emotion to fully feel what someone else is feeling. I don't think any of us can sit in judgment of another human being. We're incomplete creatures, barely scraping by. Is it possible
from the perspective of this quickly spinning Earth and our speedy journey from crib to coffin
to know the difference between right, wrong, good, and evil? I don't know if it's even useful to try. — Alexandra Fuller

It should not be possible to get from the banks of the Pepani River to Wyoming in less than two days, because mentally and emotionally it is impossible. The shock is too much, the contrast too raw. We should sail or swim or walk from Africa, letting bits of her drop out of us, and gradually, in this way, assimilate the excesses and liberties of the States in tiny, incremental sips ... p 72 — Alexandra Fuller

Surely until all of us own and honor one another's dead, until we have admitted to our murders and forgiven one another and ourselves for what we have done, there can be no truce, no dignity and no peace. — Alexandra Fuller

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

...."The mind I love must have wild places:
a tangled orchard where damsons drop in heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, a chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody has fathomed the depths of and paths threaeded with flowers planted by the mind."



Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by — Alexandra Fuller

But this is africa, so hardly anything is normal. — Alexandra Fuller

The memoirs that have come out of Africa are sometimes startlingly beautiful, often urgent, and essentially life-affirming, but they are all performances of courage and honesty. — Alexandra Fuller

I listen mostly to classical music. — Alexandra Fuller

Until I read Anne Frank's diary, I had found books a literal escape from what could be the harsh reality around me. After I read the diary, I had a fresh way of viewing the both literature and the world. From then on, I found I was impatient with books that were not honest or that were trivial and frivolous. — Alexandra Fuller

Because of all the kinds of love there are out there - romantic, passionate, parental, spousal, brotherly - the love that is touted as most unassailable, complicit, and colluding is the love between sisters. — Alexandra Fuller

It is the deep-black-sky quiet time of night, which is the halfway time between the sun setting and the sun rising when even the night animals are quiet - as if they, like day animals, take a break in the middle of their work to rest. — Alexandra Fuller

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

As soon as we mistake our ease for our security, our conveniences for our human rights, our luxuries for our entitlements, we aren't culturally distinct anymore. Then we're part of someone else's corporate plan, we're a predictable, fulfilled expectation; we're a black dot on a bottom line. — Alexandra Fuller

The only people who think war is a glorious game are the bloody fools who've never had to be on the pointy end of it. — Alexandra Fuller

To say someone has lost her mind does not do justice to what madness looks like. It's not as if a person's mind rolls out of her head, lodges under the carpet or between the cracks of the sofa, and is therefore retrievable by some logical search. — Alexandra Fuller

It's a long day's drive any way you look at it. With a man who has taken your sins - real and imagined - and stitched them onto the sackcloth of his own soul, it is endless. — Alexandra Fuller

The rains are rhythmic, coming religiously in the afternoons (after lunch has been eaten but before tea, so that the nights are washed clean-black with bright pinpoints of silver starlight hanging over a restless, grateful earth). — Alexandra Fuller

It should not be physically possible to get from the banks of the Pepani River to Wyoming in less than two days, because mentally and emotionally it is impossible. — Alexandra Fuller

I am becoming increasingly difficult to please as a reader, but I adore being surprised by a really wonderful book, written by someone I've never heard of before. — Alexandra Fuller

You always think there will be more time and then suddenly there isn't. You know how it is. You have to leave before the rains come, or it's too late. — Alexandra Fuller

Bloody dogs," Dad said, kicking indiscriminately under the table. He put his revolver next to his side-plate. Mum put her Uzi on an empty chair beside her. "Safety on?" Dad always asked. "Those things are liable to go off at the touch of a gnat's testicle. — Alexandra Fuller

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

FBI Girl is a gorgeous, sumptuous book. Conlon-McIvor takes a subject (herself and her family) that might have sunk in other hands, beats egg white under her words and the whole thing rises like a dream. It's a love story for her people and for a time and place. Read it. — Alexandra Fuller

Toasted tobacco, no additives,' I said. 'Yum. Tastes like childhood. — Alexandra Fuller

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

There's a point at which writing a book, or a long article, begins to feel like mental labor, and it's too painful to connect in the world in any real way mid-process. The only way to survive is to write until it is all said and done. — Alexandra Fuller

I had the constitution of a missionary. — Alexandra Fuller

Waternish Estate was sold to a Dutchman in the 1960s when Bad-tempered Donald died. In turn, the Dutchman sold a part of the estate to the Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. Donovan was the first of the British musicians to adopt the flower-power image. He is most famous for the psychedelically fabulous smash hits "Sunshine Superman," "Season of the Witch" and "The Fat Angel," and for being the first high-profile British pop star to be arrested for the possession of marijuana. Donovan has a history of being deeply groovy and of being most often confused with Bob Dylan, which reportedly annoys Donovan quite a lot. "Sometime in the early seventies, Bob Dylan bought part of the estate," Mum tells me. "But he put a water bed on the second floor of the house for whatever it is these hippies get up to, and it came crashing through the ceiling." "Not Bob Dylan," I say. "Donovan." "Who?" Mum says. — Alexandra Fuller

There aren't enough doctors in Africa. Those who choose to become doctors here don't do it for the money or because they want to do good. They do it because they have to heal, the way most people need to breathe or eat or love. — Alexandra Fuller

This is the Tree of Forgetfulness. All the headmen here plant one of these trees in the village. They say ancestors stay inside it. If there is some sickness or if you are troubled by spirits, then you sit under the Tree of Forgetfulness and your ancestors will assist you with whatever is wrong'. — Alexandra Fuller

In ways I don't entirely have the words for, an experience, thought or a lesson isn't real for me until I've written down. — Alexandra Fuller

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

She treated Vanessa and me as if we were visiting budgerigars that needed to be fed and then put somewhere dark for the night. — Alexandra Fuller

At morning assembly we were read the words of Cyprian of Carthage: 'Let us on both sides of death always pray for one another.' Then we bowed our heads and beseeched God to protect our troops, and to send us peace and plentiful rain, and to grant us an ample harvest. But God remained pretty meager with his miracles: the dead stayed dead, the war went on, the rain either came too early and too strong or not at all, and the harvest depended in whether or not we'd had eelworm and blight. — Alexandra Fuller

One of the things about being raised British in Africa is that you get this double whammy of toughness. The continent in place itself made you quite tough. And then you've got this British mother whose entire being rejects 'coddling' in case it makes you too soft. So there's absolutely nothing standing between you and a fairly rough experience. — Alexandra Fuller

You can't rewind war. It spools on, and on, and on, looping and jumping, distorted and cracked with age, and the stories contract until only the nuggets of hatred remain and no one can even remember, or imagine, why the war was organized in the first place. — Alexandra Fuller

Truthfully we were alone only in the ways Westerners speak of being alone in Africa, as if the few hundred locals by whom they are almost always surrounded are part of the landscape, instead of part of humanity. — Alexandra Fuller

All of us are mad and then she adds,smiling, but I'm the only one with a certificate to prove it — Alexandra Fuller