Mia Couto Quotes & Sayings

After us, there was no more world to receive anyone. — Mia Couto

He who seeks eternity should look at the sky, he who seeks the moment, should look at the cloud. — Mia Couto

Every morning the gazelle wakes up knowing she must run faster than the lion or will be dead. Every morning the lion wakes up knowing he must run faster than the gazelle or he'll starve. It doesn't matter if you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun rises you better start to run. — Mia Couto

Listen, and you will realize that we are made not from cells or from atoms. We are made from stories. — Mia Couto

I was eleven years old when I saw a woman for the first time, and I was seized by such sudden surprise that I burst into tears. — Mia Couto

But in the end, there will still be a morning like this one, full of new light, and a distant voice will be heard, like a memory of before we became people. And the tones of a song will well up, the gentle lull of the first mother. This song, yes indeed, will be ours, the memory of a deep root that they were unable to wrench out of us. This voice will give us the strength for a new beginning, and upon hearing it, the corpses will find peace in their graves and the survivors will embrace life with the simple joy of young lovers. All this will happen if we are able to rid ourselves of this time that has made animals out of us. Let us strive to die like the people we no longer are. — Mia Couto

Love is a territory where orders can't be issued. — Mia Couto

And that is what a writer is - a traveller between identities, a smuggler of souls. — Mia Couto

The greatest misfortune for a poor country is that, instead of producing wealth, it produces rich people. But rich people without wealth. In fact, it would be better to call them moneyed rather than rich: a rich person is one who possesses the means of production. A rich person is someone who generates money and provides jobs. A moneyed person is someone who quite simply has some cash. Or rather, he thinks he has. For, in reality, it's the cash that has him. — Mia Couto

On one occasion, someone asked a famous American musician, Ben Harper, this question: "We've heard you now have a new drummer in your band. Tell me something: is he black?" And Harper replied: "I don't know, I've never asked him. — Mia Couto

Our official histories of our countries and societies are made of forgetfulness, — Mia Couto

Ideas, we all know, are not born in people's heads. They begin somewhere out there, loose wisps of smoke swirling directionless in their search for a befitting mind. — Mia Couto

-Back there our sun doesn't speak.
-Where's "there," Miss Marta?
-Back there, in Europe. Here, it's different. Here, the sun moans, whispers, shouts.
-Surely-I commented delicately-the sun is always the same.
- You're wrong. There, the sun is a stone. Here it's a fruit. — Mia Couto

A Mercedes or a BMW can't make full use of its lustre, as it busily swerves to avoid the very convex buses along very concave roads. The existence of good roads would depend upon another type of wealth. A wealth that might serve the city. — Mia Couto