NoViolet Bulawayo Quotes & Sayings

He doesn't tell Aunt Fostalina she looks good, like I've heard other people do; he tells her she looks like sunrise. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Further and further we go, and the sun keeps ironing us and ironing us and ironing us. — NoViolet Bulawayo

If these walls could talk, the buildings would stutter, wouldn't remember their names. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Look at that drum of a stomach, it's like he has swallowed a country. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Now when the men talk, their voices burn in the air, making smoke all over the place. We hear about change, about new country, about democracy, about elections and what-what.
They talk and talk, the men, lick their lips and look at the dead watches on their wrists and shake their hands and slap each other and laugh like they have swallowed thunder. — NoViolet Bulawayo

The devil is a woman in a purple dress that's riding up her thighs and revealing smooth flawless skin like maybe she is an angel. A group of men are carrying her, struggling to get her to the top. I have never seen the woman before, or any of the men, but I think she is just so pretty even Sbho doesn't compare. She has long shiny hair that isn't really hers but it still looks good, nice skin, white teeth, and it seems like she eats very well. Her breasts are the only thing that is wrong with her body - nobody needs breasts that are each the size of ugly baby;s head. — NoViolet Bulawayo

At first it comes in small drops; that's how pee does, if somebody is watching, then it just won't come. I get more tiny drops, like I'm squeezing a lemon, so I close my eyes tight and concentrate.
Why are you taking so long? Forgiveness says, irritated-like, like she is somebody.
Leave her alone, is she peeing with your thing? Sbho says. Then when I'm beginning to think the pee is really not coming, it comes, so I turn around and give Forgiveness a talking eye that says Say something, uh-uh, uh-uh. — NoViolet Bulawayo

I am starting to talk fast now, and I have to remember to slow down because when I get excited, I start to sound like myself and my American accent goes away. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Why do you want to see her thing? Don't you have yours to look at if you really want to see one? — NoViolet Bulawayo

In America we saw more food than we had seen in all our lives and we were so happy we rummaged through the dustbins of our souls to retrieve the stained, broken pieces of God. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Aunt Fostalina says when she first came to America she went to school during the day and worked nights at Eliot's hotels, cleaning hotel rooms together with people from countries like Senegal, Cameroon, Tibet, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and so on. It was like the damn United Nations there, she likes to say. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Father comes home after many years of forgetting us, of not sending us money, of not loving us, not visiting us, not anything us, and parks in the shack, unable to move, unable to talk properly. unable to anything, vomiting and vomiting, Jesus, just vomiting and defecating on himself, and it smelling like something dead in there, dead and rotting, his body a black, terrible stick; I come in from playing Find bin Laden and he is there. — NoViolet Bulawayo

I say good-bye to Kate, but she doesn't respond, which is how come I know that she is mad at me, but I don't really care because it's not like I stole her guavas. And — NoViolet Bulawayo

You pray and pray and pray and nothing changes, like for example I prayed for a real house and good clothes and a bicycle and things for a long, long, time, and none of it happened, not even one little thing, which is how I know that all this praying for Father is just people playing. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Look at them leaving in droves, arm in arm with loss and lost, look at hem leaving in droves. — NoViolet Bulawayo

If Messenger would be to open his mouth right now, his voice would be a terrible wound. — NoViolet Bulawayo

That crown on her head is very heavy, that's why she is smiling like that, smiling like she just ate a whole bunch of unripe guavas. It's heavy because it's made of gold, Godknows says.
I thought crowns were made of thorns. I saw a picture of it in the Bible, when they were killing Jesus, Sbho says. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Others with names like myths, names like puzzles, names we had never heard before: Virgilio, Balamugunthan, Faheem, Abdulrahman, Aziz, Baako, Dae-Hyun, Ousmane, Kimatsu. When it was hard to say the many strange names, we called them by their countries.
So how on earth do you do this, Sri Lanka?
Mexico, are you coming or what?
Is it really true you sold a kidney to come to America, India?
Guys, just give Tshaka Zulu a break, the guy is old, I'm just saying.
We know you despise this job, Sudan, but deal with it, man.
Come, Ethiopia, move, move, move; Israel, Kazakhstn, Niger, brothers, let's go! — NoViolet Bulawayo

Look at the children of the land leaving in droves, leaving their own land with bleeding wounds on their bodies and shock on their faces and blood in their hearts and hunger in their stomachs and grief in their footsteps. Leaving their mothers and fathers and children behind, leaving their umbilical cords underneath the soil, leaving the bones of their ancestors in the earth, leaving everything that makes them who and what they are, leaving because it is no longer possible to stay. They will never be the same again because you cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same. — NoViolet Bulawayo

To play the country-game, we have to choose a country. Everybody wants to be the USA and Britain and Canada and Australia and Switzerland and them. Nobody wants to be rags of countries like Congo, like Somalia, like Iraq, like Sudan, like Haiti, and not even this one we live in - who wants to be a terrible place of hunger and things falling apart? — NoViolet Bulawayo

As for the coldness, I have never seen it like this. I mean, coldness that makes like it wants to kill you, like it's telling you, with its snow, that you should go back to where you came from. — NoViolet Bulawayo

With all this snow, with the sun not there, with the cold and dreariness, this place doesn't look like my America, doesn't even look real. It's like we are in a terrible story, like we're in the crazy parts of the Bible, there where God is busy punishing people for their sins and is making them miserable with all the weather. The sky, for example, has stayed white all this time I have been here, which tells you that something is not right. Even the stones know that a sky is supposed to be blue, like our sky back home, which is blue, so blue you can spray Clorox on it and wipe it with a paper towel and it wouldn't even come off. — NoViolet Bulawayo

If I bring forth what is inside me, what I bring forth will save me. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Leaving your country is like dying, and when you come back you are like a ghost returning to earth, roaming around with missing gaze in your eyes — NoViolet Bulawayo

Because we were not in our country, we could not use our own languages, and so when we spoke our voices came out bruised. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Okay, A as in apple - Not apple. A as in anus, it's a different sound. — NoViolet Bulawayo

And the women spread their ntsaroz and sit on one side, the men on the other, like they are two different rivers that are not supposed to meet. — NoViolet Bulawayo

We're hungry but we're together and we're at home and everything is sweeter than dessert. — NoViolet Bulawayo

That's what you do in America: you smile at people you don't know and you smile at people you don't even like and you smile for no reason. — NoViolet Bulawayo

When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky. — NoViolet Bulawayo

I used to be very afraid of graveyards and death and such things, but not anymore. There is just no sense of being afraid when you live so near the graves; it would be like the tongue fearing the teeth. — NoViolet Bulawayo

There are times, though, that no matter how much food I eat, I find the food does nothing for me, like I am hungry for my country and nothing is going to fix that — NoViolet Bulawayo

You want Change, today we'll show you Change!
Here's your democracy, your human rights, eat it, eat eat eat! — NoViolet Bulawayo

In America, the fatness is not the fatness I was used to at home. Over there, the fatness was of bigness, just ordinary fatness you could understand because it meant the person ate well, fatness you could even envy. It was fatness that did not interfere with the body; a neck was still a neck, a stomach a stomach, an arm an arm, a buttock a buttock. But this American fatness takes it to a whole 'nother level: the body is turned into something else - the neck becomes a thigh, the stomach becomes an anthill, an arm a thing, a buttock a I don't even know what. — NoViolet Bulawayo

It's not the lying itself that makes me feel bad but the fact that I'm here lying to my friends. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Look at them leaving in droves despite knowing they will be welcomed with restraint in those strange lands because they do not belong, knowing they will have to sit on one buttock because they must not sit comfortable lest they be asked to rise and leave, knowing they will speak in dampened whispers because they must not let their voices drown those of the owners of the land, knowing they will have to walk on their toes because they must not leave footprints on the new earth lest they be mistaken for those who want to claim the land as theirs. Look at them leaving in droves, arm in arm with loss and lost, look at them leaving in droves. — NoViolet Bulawayo

And so the spirits just gazed at us with eyes milked dry of care. — NoViolet Bulawayo

[Jesus Christ] used to have blue eyes but I painted them brown like mine and everybody's, to make him normal. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Now there is a soft tap on the door. It's that man again. I don't know his name but I know it's him and nobody else because he always knocks five times, not four, not six, just five, and so softly too, like he fears he will make dents in the tin. Mother pulls the blankets over my head and then blows out the candle before opening the door. But what she doesn't know is that I am always awake most of the time this happens, because I am the hare. — NoViolet Bulawayo

And the jobs we worked, Jesus - Jesus - Jesus, the jobs we worked. Low-paying jobs. Backbreaking jobs. Jobs that gnawed at the bones of our dignity, devoured the meat, tongued the marrow. — NoViolet Bulawayo

If you are stealing something it's better if it's small and hideable or something you can eat quickly and be done with, like guavas. This way, people can't see you with the thing to be reminded that you are a shameless thief and that you stole it from them, so I don't know what the white people were trying to do in the first place, stealing not just a tiny piece but a whole country. Who can ever forget you stole something like that? — NoViolet Bulawayo

they will be welcomed with restraint in those strange lands because they do not belong, knowing they will have to sit on one buttock because they must not sit comfortably lest they be asked to rise and leave, knowing they will speak in dampened whispers because they must not let their voices drown those of the owners of the land, knowing they will have to walk on their toes because they must not leave footprints on the new earth lest they be mistaken for those who want to claim the land as theirs. — NoViolet Bulawayo

I've thought about it properly, this whole praying thing, I mean really thought about it, and what I think is that maybe people are doing it wrong; that instead of asking God nicely, people should be demanding and questioning and threatening to stop worshipping. Maybe that way, he would think differently and try to make things right, like he is supposed to; even that verse in the Bible says ask for anything and you shall receive and, I mean, whose words are those? — NoViolet Bulawayo

We just eat a lot of guavas because its the only way to kill our hunger, and when it comes to defecating, we get in so much pain it becomes an almost impossible task, like you are trying to give birth to a country. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Generally the men always tried to appear strong; they walked tall, heads upright, arms steady at the sides, and feet firmly planted like trees. Solid, Jericho walls of men. But when they went out in the bush to relieve themselves and nobody was looking, the fell apart like crumbling towers and wept with the wretched grief of forgotten concubines.
And when they returned to the presence of their women and children and everybody else, they stuck hands deep inside torn pockets until they felt their dry thighs, kicked little stones out of the way, and erected themselves like walls again, but then the women, who knew all the ways of weeping and all there was to know about falling apart, would not be deceived; they gently rose from the hearths, beat dust off their skirts, and planted themselves like rocks in front of their men and children and shacks, and only then did all appear almost tolerable. — NoViolet Bulawayo

When somebody talks about home, you have to listen carefully so you know exactly which one the person is referring to. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Heaven is boring. Didn't you see, in that picture book back when we used to go to school? It's just plain and white and there is not even any color and it's too orderly. Like there will be crazy prefects telling you all the time: Do thus, don't do that, where are your shoes, tuck in your shirt, shhh, God doesn't like it and will punish you, keep your voice low you'll wake the angels, go and wash, you are dirty, Bastard says.
Me, when I die I want to go where there's lots of food and music and a party that never ends and we're singing that Jobho song, Godknows says. — NoViolet Bulawayo

I always feel guilty around sick people because there is nothing I can do for them. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Sometimes I don't even bother coming up with proper words for conversation. It's not necessary; some people are content to just talk to themselves. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Just tell me one thing. What are you doing not in your country right now? Why did you run off to America, Darling Nonkululeko Nkala, huh? Why did you just leave? If it's your country, you have to love it to live in it and not leave it. You have to fight for it no matter what, to make it right. Tell me, do you abandon your house because it's burning or do you find water to put out the fire? And if you leave it burning, do you expect the flames to turn into water and put themselves out? You left it, Darling, my dear, you left the house burning and you have the guts to tell me in that stupid accent that you were not even born with, that doesn't even suit you, that this is your country? — NoViolet Bulawayo

Good, good, now say cheese, say cheese, cheese, cheeeeeeese - the woman enthuses, and everyone says cheese. Myself, I don't really say, because I am busy trying to remember what cheese means exactly, and I cannot remember. Yesterday Mother of Bones told us the story of Dudu the bird who learned and sand a new song whose words she did not really know the meaning of and who was then caught, killed, and cooked for dinner because in the song she was actually begging people to kill and cook her. — NoViolet Bulawayo

The problem with English is this: You usually can't open your mouth and it comes out just like that
first you have to think what you want to say. Then you have to find the words. Then you have to carefully arrange those words in your head. Then you have to say the words quietly to yourself, to make sure you got them okay. And finally, the last step, which is to say the words out loud and have them sound just right.
But then because you have to do all this, when you get to the final step, something strange has happened to you and you speak the way a drunk walks. And, because you are speaking like falling, it's as if you are an idiot, when the truth is that it's the language and the whole process that's messed up. And then the problem with those who speak only English is this: they don't know how to listen; they are busy looking at your falling instead of paying attention to what you are saying. — NoViolet Bulawayo

I think the reason they are my relatives now is they are from my country too - it's like the country has become a real family since we are in America, which is not our country — NoViolet Bulawayo

He speaks with this tone like he owns things, but we know that even the baton stick in his hands is not his, that if he weren't on this street he'd be nothing. — NoViolet Bulawayo

And when they asked us where we were from, we exchanged glances and smiled with the shyness of child brides. They said, Africa? We nodded yes. What part of Africa? We smiled. Is it that part where vultures wait for famished children to die? We smiled. Where the life expectancy is thirty-five years? We smiled? Is is there where dissidents shove AK-47s between women's legs? We smiled. Where people run about naked? We smiled. That part where they massacred each other? We smiled. Is it where the old president rigged the election and people were tortured and killed and a whole bunch of them put in prison and all, there where they are dying of cholera - oh my God, yes, we've seen your country; it's been on the news. — NoViolet Bulawayo