#Quotes from Femi Osofisan's Women of Owu

Nowadays, when the strong fight the weak, it's called a Liberation War to free the weak from oppression. [8]

Nowadays, in the new world, it is suicide to be weak. [8]

I ask you- without a shrine, without worshippers, what is a god? [9]

Some words are such that when we hear them, all the light inside us dies at once, and our smiling daylight turns into the bleakness of night. [27]

I lit the torch so I will not have to grope my way to the camp where I shall be married to my enemy, that handsome butcher of our people. [27-8]

The gods! Which gods! Do you still trust any of them after this? Or have you quickly forgotten what they told us about Anlugbua just now? No, women, there is no shelter anywhere but in ourselves! Each of us has become our own god. [33]

Happiness is a fake. The gods employ it as a mask to trick us each time they are about to plunge us into grief. [37]

Don't speak like that, my child. Death is sweet, we think. But it is easier to talk of it, than to welcome it. We do not know what is on the other side, whether it is better or worse than here. Whereas even at its most bitter, life offers hope at least, which death does not. [41-2]

Even in misfortune, which levels everyone, the potions are unequal: we dare not tell you what we believe will becoming to us. [42]

My daughter, you won't like to hear this but my advice is- do like the reed in the bush. Stand and strut in good weather. But when it storms, learn also to bend. [42]

Anger and desire are twin sisters in this drama we call love, two kernels in the same nut! [48]

Anyone can kill. But it is not everybody who can forgive, or who can be just, as I know you are. [51]

An artist has only his dreams. He has no power. [52]

[T]he skin that graces the king's shoulders, the leopard knows who supplied it. When mother Goat nods at the sonorous sound of the drum, she is not dancing! It is because, each time it sounds, she recognizes the wailing of the leather! [55]

It is the fate of the conquered to toil for the strong! That is the logic of war, the logic of defeat! [55]

Beauty makes all women vulnerable to the greed of men [57]

War never ends, but only moves to another place? [58]

Let no one count herself lucky till she finds herself on her death bed. [60]

Home is where every traveller returns after a journey, however long. When night falls, the visitor must take his leave of his hosts. [65]

No swimmer, however good, can swim beyond the rim of the world. [65]

A father can only chew for a child; he cannot swallow for her. [66]
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