Quotes by Alexandra Fuller

What is important is the story. Because when we are all dust and teeth and kicked-up bits of skin - when were dancing with our own skeletons - our words might be all thats left of us.

You cant rewind war. It spools on, and on, and on, looping and jumping, distorted and cracked with age, and the stories contract until only the nuggets of hatred remain and no one can even remember, or imagine, why the war was organized in the first place.

She treated Vanessa and me as if we were visiting budgerigars that needed to be fed and then put somewhere dark for the night.

You learn not to mourn every little thing out here, or you’d never, ever stop grieving.

It was a land of almost breathtaking beauty or of savage poverty; a land of screaming ghosts or of sun-flung possibilities; a land of inviting warmth or of desperate drought. How you see a country depends on whether you are driving through it, or living in it. How you see a country depends on whether or not you can leave it, if you have to.

The two of us lurching on an unlikely journey up a lonely road in the dark, thick beginning of a Mozambique night. As our pickup churned over rocks and through thick sand, the engine drowned out the night cries of the cicadas, the crickets, and the nightjars. Behind us, a plume of dust burned pink in our rear lights.

The doctor in Murare is old - old for anybody. He is especially old for a doctor and especially old for an African. But he doesn´t have the luxury of retirement to look forward to. There aren´t enough doctors in Africa. Those who choose to become doctors here don´t do it for the money or because thy want to do good. They do it because they have to heal, the way most people need to breath or eat or love. They can´t stop. As long as they are alive, they will never not be a doctor. They can be old, or alcoholic or burnt-out, but they will always be a doctor.

There is only one time of absolute silence. Halfway between the dark of night and the light of morning, all animals and crickets and birds fall into a profound silence as if pressed quiet by the deep quality of the blackest time of night...This silence is how I know it is not yet dawn, nor is it the middle of the night, but it is the place of no-time, when all things sleep most deeply, when their guard is dozing

It was the time of night that precedes dawn and is without perspective or reason. It was the hour when regret and fear overwhelm hope and courage and when all that is ugly in us is magnified and when we are most panic-stricken by what we have lost, and what we have almost lost, and what we fear we might lose.

it is the deep-black-sky quiet time of night, which is the halfway time between the sun setting and the sun rising when even the night animals are quiet—as if they, like day animals, take a break in the middle of their work to rest.

But this is africa, so hardly anything is normal.

The schools wear the blank faces of war buildings, their windows blown blind by rocks or guns or mortars. Their plaster is an acne of bullet marks. The huts and small houses crouch open and vulnerable; their doors are flimsy pieces of plyboard or sacks hanging and lank. Children and chickens and dogs scratch in the red, raw soil and stare at us as we drive through their open, eroding lives.

In the West, it was believed that attitude and ambition saved you. In Africa, we had learned that no one was immune to capricious tragedy.

I adore my family. I dont love their politics. I think theyre wonderful parents. They were dreadful at parenting.

I dont know if its just my age or the climate or the high altitude or some of those old-cowboy values rubbing off on me, but Ive grown slightly mellower living in Wyoming. I think if you ride into the West on a high horse, you pretty soon end up in a pile of manure.

The memoirs that have come out of Africa are sometimes startlingly beautiful, often urgent, and essentially life-affirming, but they are all performances of courage and honesty.

There are real consequences when women speak out. Its really dangerous, and it takes real courage. We are still speaking out against a white male majority. Forget the glass ceiling. We havent even broken the glass floor!

Yes, as an oppressed people, American Indians have this epic burden, but first and foremost, theyre human: sometimes a mess, sometimes funny or sad, at times very wise, and other times not wise at all - a lot like me.

I think theres a big difference between loving someone out of duty and dependency and loving someone because you really are able to sort of grow and be whole in the context of that relationship.

I have heard over and over again that the drilling business is a dangerous business, and death is an expected part of the game, but Ive also heard of the way that safety violations, human and environmental laws, and a concern for the local culture are flaunted in pursuit of money.