Quotes for Friday

Her five daily prayers were like punctuation marks that divided up and gave meaning to her life. Each prayer had for her a distinct quality, just as different foods had their own flavours. (Page 3, Distant View of a Minaret, in Distant View of a Minaret by Alifa Rifaat)

All fifty years, I felt, were shown in the footprints they had left round my eyes, which were still my best feature, and in the slackness round my chin (Page 17, Thursday Lunch, in Distant View of a Minaret by Alifa Rifaat)

Life is a web weaving a spider (Page 95, The Ex-Future Priest and His Would-be Widow, in Voices Made Night by Mia Couto)

Happiness stepped out of her and forgot to return (Page 83, Patanhoca the Lovesick Snake Catcher, in Voices Made Night by Mia Couto)

I am a blind man who sees many doors (Page 48, So You Haven't Flown Yet,, Carlota Gentina, in Voices Made Night by Mia Couto)

The power of a minion is to make others feel even smaller, to tread on others just as he himself is trodden on by his superiors (Page 47, So You Haven't Flown Yet,, Carlota Gentina, in Voices Made Night by Mia Couto)

...the calmest features hide the most scheming minds (Page 59, A Wasted Land by Daniel Mandishona, in Contemporary African Short Stories Edited by Chinua Achebe and C.L. Innes)

We could see that their promise land would be a tainted utopia, a paradise of emptiness. Yet somehow we listened to them and followed them like columns of compliant sonambulists to the edge of the chasm (Page 61,  A Wasted Land by Daniel Mandishona, in Contemporary African Short Stories Edited by Chinua Achebe and C.L. Innes)

...true goodness cannot be measured in times of abundance but when hunger dances in bodies of men (Page 69, The Bird's of God by Mia Couto, in Contemporary African Short Stories Edited by Chinua Achebe and C.L. Innes)

...he who is chosen by God always wanders off his path. (Page 70, The Bird's of God by Mia Couto, in Contemporary African Short Stories Edited by Chinua Achebe and C.L. Innes)