Quotes from Abdulrazak Gurnah

Her ?ey karma??kt?r ve sorular yaln?zca yak?nl?k ve deneyim ile anla??labilecek ?eyleri basitle?tirir.

Evin sessizliÄŸi beni boÄŸuyordu ve bana onu hat?rlatan çok fazla eÅŸya vard?.

For millions of people, she could hear him say with thattremulousintensity of his, moving is a moment of ruin and failure, a defeat that is no longer avoidable, a desperate flight, going from bad to worse, from home to homelessness, from citizen to refugee, from living a tolerable or even contented life to vile horror.

I don't think I ever got over those early days, though. Even after all these years I can't get over the feeling of being alien in England, of being a foreigner. Sometimes I think that what I feel for England is disappointed love.

Y sólo entonces supe que mi vida había sido un desierto hasta ese instante, y conocí la dulzura del silencio entre compañeros.

and marked their ceremonial imperial rituals with white linen uniforms adorned with fantasy medals and wore cork helmets festooned with feathers and carried swords in gilt-edged scabbards, like conquerors. They gave themselves tin-god titles and pretended that they were aristocrats.

My mother's father, Ahmed Musa Ibrahim, was an educated man, a travelled man, who had no time for these self-deluding patrician airs. He preferred to speak about justice and liberty and the right to self-fulfilment.

Bir yaÅŸa gelmeden hayat?n ne kadar uzun olduÄŸunu anlam?yorsun. Her ÅŸeyinin bittiÄŸiniz san?yorsun ama bitmiyor, uzun süre bitmiyor. bedeninin hayatta kalmak için ne kadar az güce ihtiyac? olduÄŸunu anlam?yorsun, vücudun sana inat ölmeyi reddediyor.

The Germans were afraid of nothing.

As if they were anything more than debilitating stories that turned everything into moments of reprise that disabled and disarmed.

So I smiled and began to talk in what I hoped was a genial and friendly voice, but as soon as I started I could hear resonances of my teacher tones: informative, seeking to persuade, holding things back. I pressed on. I was a teacher, that was what I was. I was unfulfilled.

They offered me freedom as a gift. She did. Who told her she had it to offer? I know the freedom you are talking about. I had that freedom the moment I was born. When these people say you belong to me, I own you, it is like the passing of the rain, or the setting of the sun at the end of the day.

I speak to maps. And sometimes they something back to me. This is not as strange as it sounds, nor is it an unheard of thing. Before maps, the world was limitless. It was maps that gave it shape and made it seem like territory, like something that could be possessed, not just laid waste and plundered. Maps made places on the edges of the imagination seem graspable and placable.

Respect yourself and others will come to respect you. That is true about all of us, but especially true about women. That is the meaning of honour.

Sometimes I think it is my fate to live in the wreckage and confusion of crumbling houses.

What is the point of literature? I think that the person who asks that question will not find my answer convincing anyway

That's the way life takes us,' Elleke once said. 'It takes us like this, then it turns us over and takes us like that.' What she didn't say was that through it all we manage to cling to something that makes sense.

This is the burden we all have to bear, to live a useful life

I am a refugee, an asylum-seeker. These are not simple words, even if habit of hearing them makes them seem so.

The whole world ends up in London somehow

We were strolling along the waterfront, his favourite walk, going nowhere in particular, the postcolonial condition.

Life's like that, clinging futilely to the very objects that imprison us.

That's the way life takes us,' Elleke once said. 'It takes us like this, then it turns us over and takes us like that.' What she didn't say was that through it all we manage to cling to something that makes sense. -- By The Sea

They wanted to glory in grievance, in promises of vengeance, in their past oppression, in their present poverty and in the nobility of their darker skins.