#Quotes from African Short Stories edited by Chinua Achebe and C. L. Innes

An animal cannot live at man's expense when man is a nomad. Like clings to like, it is said. [2; The False Prophet by Sembene Ousmane]

If the setting sun brings a stranger, don't look for him at sunrise. [4; The False Prophet by Sembene Ousmane]

Make sure of your money first. It's easier to pray when you're sure of having a full belly. [6; The False Prophet by Sembene Ousmane]

Pregnancy and birth and death and pain; and death again... when there are no more pregnancies, there are no more births, and therefore, no more deaths. But there is only one death and only one pain. [8; Certain Winds from the South by Ama Ata Aidoo]

Show me a fresh corpse, my sister, so I can weep you old tears. [8; Certain Winds from the South by Ama Ata Aidoo]

In the old days, how time goes, and how quickly age comes. But then does one expect to grow younger when one starts getting grandchildren? [9; Certain Winds from the South by Ama Ata Aidoo]

Every calling has its hazards. [23; The Will of Allah by David Owoyele]

He who attempts to shake a stump only shakes himself. [23; The Will of Allah by David Owoyele]

Allah, he was sure, gives some people more than they need so that others with too little could help themselves to some of it. [23-4; The Will of Allah by David Owoyele]

In a partnership that each believed was for his own special benefit, there could be no fancy code of conduct. [24; The Will of Allah by David Owoyele]

Wash when you find a stream; for when you cross another is entirely in the hands of Allah. [24; The Will of Allah by David Owoyele]

Gleeful tallysheet of past misdeeds. A time there was... but we ended it all with a careless selfishness. [51; Bossy by Abdulrazak Gurnah]

She worked in beer-halls where sons of women came to drown their inner lives in beer cans and froth. [71; Minutes of Glory by Ngugi wa Thiong'o]

This generation was now awed by the mystery of death, just as it was callous to the mystery of life. [75; Minutes of Glory by Ngugi wa Thiong'o]

It's nothing, Mother, but, you  know, our son believes that people don't mount wild horses, and that they only make use of the hungry docile ones. [114; Papa, Snake & I by B. L. Honwana]

He was exposed, turning naked to space on the sphere of the world as the speck that is a fly plastered on the window of an aeroplane, but he was not aware of it. [120; The Bridegroom by Nadine Gordimer]

The lyre-player picked up his flimsy piece of wood again, and slowly what the young man was feeling inside himself seemed to find a voice; up into the night beyond the fire, it went, uncoiling from his breast and bringing ease. [122-3; The Bridegroom by Nadine Gordimer]

At that very moment she realised fully the ghastliness of a man's jealousy, which gleamed and glanced on the blade and seemed to have raised  a film which steadied the slit eyes. [142; The Coffee-Cart Girl by Ezekiel Mphahlele]

You can't smack a fly, that is the trouble with you, man. Honest and educated, no many educated are honest these days. [156; Reflections in a Cell]