Best 29 quotes of Noviolet Bulawayo on MyQuotes

Noviolet Bulawayo

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    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.

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

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

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

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

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

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

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

    When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky....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....Look at them leaving in droves, despite knowing they will be welcomed with restraint in those strange lands because they do not belong

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

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

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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. When we talked, our tongues thrashed madly in our mouths, staggered like drunken men. Because we were not using our languages we said things we did not mean; what we really wanted to say remained folded inside. trapped. In America we did not always have the words. It was only when were were by ourselves that we spoke in our real voices. When we were alone we summoned the horses of our languages and mounted their backs and galloped past skyscrapers. Always, we were reluctant to come back.

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

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

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

    I am careful not to look anyone in the face because I don't want them to see the shame in my eyes, and I also don't want to see the laughter in theirs.

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

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

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    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?

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    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.

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

    It's not the lying itself that makes makes me feel bad but the fact that I'm here lying to my friends. I don't like not playing with them and I don't like lying to them because they are the most important thing to me and when I'm not with them I feel like I'm not even me.

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

    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 just cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same.

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    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.

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

    Running and chanting, the word change in the air like it's something you can grab and put in your mouth and sink your teeth into.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

    They will never be the same again because you just cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same.

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

    We are all watching and not knowing what to do because when grown-ups cry, it's not like you can ask them what's wrong, or tell them to shut up; there are just no words for a grown-up's tears.

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

    We are careful not to touch the NGO people, though, because we can see that even though they are giving us things, they do not want to touch us or for us to touch them.

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

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

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

    When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky. They flee their own wretched land so their hunger may be pacified in foreign lands, their tears wiped away in strange lands, the wounds of their despair bandaged in faraway lands, their blistered prayers muttered in the darkness of queer lands.

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

    When you look into their faces it's like something that was in there got up and gathered its things and walked away.

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    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.

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    Noviolet Bulawayo

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