Bessie Head Quotes & Sayings

I have often noticed that the need for cash and the production of a masterpiece just don't coincide with me. Money will hit me at a big off-period and genius will hit me in starvation, that is, I often get the money when I don't think I deserve it and have been lolling around for days and days thinking the most abysmal thoughts. — Bessie Head

I am building a stairway to the stars. I have the authority to take the whole of mankind up there with me. That is why I write. — Bessie Head

Poverty has a home in Africalike a quiet second skin.It may be the only place on earth where it is worn with unconscious dignity. — Bessie Head

That is, adoration was patient and waiting while love or, if you liked, plain sexual passion banged everything about. It either shouted or thought it knew too much, and it had always left him cold and had not involved his heart. Therefore, if he wanted to get involved now it would be on his own terms and at his own pace. — Bessie Head

It seemed to be a makeshift replacement for love, absenting oneself from stifling atmospheres, because love basically was a torrential storm of feeling; it thrived only in partnership with laughing generosity and truthfulness. — Bessie Head

I once sat down on a bench at Cape Town railway station where the notice "Whites Only" was obscured. A few moments later a white man approached and shouted: 'Get off!' It never occurred to him that he was achieving the opposite of his dreams of superiority and had become a living object of contempt, that human beings, when they are human, dare not conduct themselves in such ways. — Bessie Head

A discipline I have observed is an attitude of love and reverence to people. — Bessie Head

Love is mutually feeding each other, not one living on another like a ghoul. — Bessie Head

The contradictions were apparent to Makhaya, and perhaps there was no greater crime as yet than all the lies Western civilization had told in the name of Jesus Christ. It seemed to Makhaya far preferable for Africa if it did without Christianity and Christian double-talk, fat priests, golden images, and looked around at all the thin naked old men who sat under trees weaving baskets with shaking hands. People could do without religions and Gods who died for the sins of the world and thereby left men without any feeling of self-responsibility for the crimes they committed. This seemed to Makhaya the greatest irony of Christianity. It meant that a white man could forever go on slaughtering black men simply because Jesus Christ would save him from his sins. Africa could do without a religion like that. 135 — Bessie Head

People with really weak characters cause an immense amount of suffering in the world. They destroy whole civilisations. — Bessie Head

Most people live uncomplicated lives. They have work and quietly rear their children. There is an order and sanity about them that keeps the world going. There is an outer disorder and insanity about my life which makes me a victim. One of the disorders is that they won't give us citizenship here ... — Bessie Head

I might really have gone round the bend. I mean people who get visions and see a gigantic light descend on them from the sky can't be all there but if so I feel mighty happy. If one is happy and cracked it's much better than being unhappy and sane. — Bessie Head

The philosophy of love and peace strangely overlooked who was in possession of the guns. There had been love and peace for some time on the continent of Africa because for all this time black men had been captivated by the doctrines of Christianity. It took them centuries to realize its contradictions ... perhaps there was no greater crime as yet than all the lies Western civilization had told in the name of Jesus Christ. — Bessie Head

I write because I have authority from life to do so. — Bessie Head