Quotes from Aminatta Forna

You know, a lot of people nowadays believe they're owed a happy ending.

T]hose most precious memories are hidden in the safest place of all. Safe from fire or floods or war. In stories. Stories remembered, until they are ready to be told. Or perhaps simply ready to be heard.

My name is Attila.' ah-til-ha. 'That's an unusual name,' Jean said. 'to whom?' replied Attila cheerfully. 'Well . . . everyone,' said Jean. 'not to the Hungarians or the Turks,' said Attila. 'your parents named you after Attila the Hun?' Attila smiled. 'Some people,' he said, 'name their baby girls Victoria.

Yet what use against the deceit of a state are the memories of a child?

Julius and Raffia were like the sun and the moon. Everything revolved around Julius, or he behaved as though it did, you were drawn into his orbit. But Saffia was the moon, emanating her own clear, magnetic energy. The one to whom all our stories were told.

This is our country. He was rejecting Adrian's offer of help. It was this that had stung so much, the idea he was neither wanted nor needed. It had simply never occurred to him. Attila. The man is right, of course. People here don't need therapy so much as hope. But the hope has to be real- Attila's warning to Adrian. I fall down, I get up. Westerners Adrian has met despise the fatalism. But perhaps it is the way people have found to survive.

Once, standing in an open space, he'd seen a commercial airliner pass overhead, on its way from one country to another, the sun golden upon its wings. It seemed incredible to him that there were people inside, drinking wine and eating from plastic trays, pressing a button for the hostess. Did they have any idea what was going on directly below them, a nation devouring itself? He felt like a drowning man watching a ship sail by.

home is always located in the past. It is not enough for me to say, 'Arlington.' Also, it is a noun used strictly in the singular. The word 'homes' is antithetical to the idea of home.

Jean wondered how it might be to go out into the night and howl for sex. The clarity of purpose was appealing. No games.

Minutes past midnight the group left Pardis to be mugged by the wind, which came at them down the street like a gang of thieves.

The artist Paul Klee described drawing a picture as taking a line for a walk. I have borrowed his words to explain my approach to writing; when I write a novel it is like I am taking a thought for a walk.

I temporarily became a surgeon for 'Memory of Love'. I spent two weeks in an operating theatre, watching amputations, and I loved it.

I'm a doctor's daughter. I'm not squeamish at all.

I'm at my desk for about 9:30 A.M., and I stay there all day. Then there's a lot of checking Facebook and eBay and that sort of thing.

If you want to know a country, read its writers.

All liars ... lie to protect themselves, to shield their egos from the raw pain of truth.

The hollowness in his chest, the tense yearning, the loneliness he braces against, every morning until he can immerse himself in work and forget. Not love. Something else, something with a power that endures. Not love, but a memory of love.

A life, a history, whole patterns of existence altered, simply by doing nothing. The silent lie. The act of omission.

How differently we behave in other peoples countries ... no sooner than we think we can get away with it, we do as we please. It doesn't require the breakdown of a social order. It takes a six-hour plane flight.

War had the effect of encouraging people to try to stay alive. Poverty, too. Survival was simply too hard-won to be given up lightly.

The reckless open their arms and topple into love, as do dreamers, who fly in their dreams without fear or danger. Those who know that all love must end in loss do not fall but rather cross slowly from the not knowing into the knowing.

When you do nothing, what do your children inherit? They inherit, nothing.

A dread filled me, a dread unlike any I had ever felt. Not the terror of God, or his angels, but the sickly fear of man.

I learned about women -- how we are made into the women we've become, how we shape ourselves, how we shape each other.