Wayétu Moore > Quotes

“Loneliness while in the presence of others is a most cruel kind.”
― Wayetu Moore, She Would Be King

“The girl with the biggest gift of us all. Life. If she was not a girl or if she was not a woman; if she was not a woman or if she was not a witch, she would be king.”
― Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King

“I am not better. I am not worse. I am changed. I am a different woman. I forgot myself. And I am sorry.”
― Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King

“Alike spirits separated at great distances will always be bound to meet, even if only once; kindred souls will always collide; and strings of coincidences are never what they appear to be on the surface, but instead are the mask of God”
― Wayetu Moore, She Would Be King

“Alike spirits separated at great distances will always be bound to meet, even if only once; kindred souls will always collide...”
― Wayetu Moore, She Would Be King

“They told us we had no history but darkness, so they kept the books away for fear we might understand the truth better, and thus find those lost selves.”
― Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King

“How can you leave me?' Maisy had said one night. 'You are my sister now. My flesh. Flesh cannot leave you.' At which Gbessa almost lost her breath. The kindness, the newness, stunned her.”
― Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King

“But Papa was right that most Liberians, most, did not choose Liberia to be their country. Just as Ivorians did not choose. Just as Ghanaians and so many others did not choose; some men in Berlin in 1884 drew those lines, gave those names. Without agency, who can love a country forced upon them?”
― Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir

“Yes—perhaps everybody, in their own way, was either a witch or the king who loved her.”
― Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King

“Without agency, who can love a country forced upon them?”
― Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir

“I could be beautiful in a place and still not enough, not because of who I was or anything I had done, but because of something as simple, and somehow as grand in this new place, as the color of my skin.”
― Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir

“Loneliness while in the presence of others is a most cruel kind”
― Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King

“And I want to find the words, the poetry, to give her the thanks she deserves for her shoulder. For stirring my ginger tea all those times my voice got lost in that job/man/city. For understanding what it was like to be at that table, to be a young girl just learning how much the world's opinion of you differed from your loving Mam's. Those girls helped me. They healed me. She heals me. But another thing had happened and she forgot her power. Another thing happens and she becomes that little girl, running. Racing to safety, to be better than each other, to be better than ourselves, to be seen.”
― Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir

“A snake spit poison into her blood. Yet death was but a tease. These things that suffered others cowered in her presence. She had lived, and still, she was living.”
― Wayétu Moore

“Barely one year in and our new country let us know, every day, that we were different.”
― Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir

“Those princes from my childhood were fighting not only for their people but also for their nations, the countries they chose. Gio is a country. Mano is a country. Kpelle is a country. Vai is a country. And these nations were centuries old. Men and women across the continent would die with those nationhoods on their hearts.”
― Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir

“There are many stories of war to tell. You will hear them all. But remember among those who were lost, some made it through. Among the dragons there will always be heroes. Even there. Even then. And of those tales ending in defeat, tales of death and orphans wandering among the ruined, some ended the other way too.”
― Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir

“There is a weight that builds on shoulders when one leaves home. The longer a person stays away, the heavier the burden of displacement.”
― Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir

“The whips fell onto June Dey’s chest now, but as on his back, his skin did not break. Instead, each time he was struck his strength grew. Each time they whipped him, he became more infuriated and they sensed it in him. While beating him, the helper with the other whip looked down at his trousers as his bladder weakened and poured onto his clothes and shoes. Embarrassed and pale with trepidation, he lifted his gun from his belt. The maids screamed at the sight of the gun and the helper immediately fired it. The bullet soared toward June Dey and Darlene. It flew toward his chest. They expected that it would kill him on impact, expected that this would be his end and the boy would go from them as mysteriously as he had come.
But the bullet, as if repelled by his skin, fell to the ground. The slight puncture where the bullet would have made its permanent hole quickly healed in their sight, and the helper dropped the gun and ran away from them like a bullied child.”
― Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King

“Strong, he was. Strong, and a good man. Yet even he was not strong enough to shatter what bound him—the suggestion that being good meant letting what you loved slip through your fingers to appease a man who questions your humanity. The suggestion that joy meant serving. The suggestion that, though misplaced, he was home. The suggestion that being good meant that he was to protect what was in his oppressor's interest, but allow his own flesh to meander about life until they were all an infinity of broken men. Strong then, yes. But not a good man. He would not be that.”
― Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King

“Seem everybody I ever know ain't got time to do nothing. Someday you want time to do some things you never had time to do.”
― Wayetu Moore, She Would Be King

“Loneliness while in the presence of others is a most cruel kind...”
― Wayétu Moore

“But there were things I went into the world not knowing. We did not talk about what to do when a boy was unkind, in words or actions, breaking my heart. I was lousy in the ways of healing. Mam had one true love and she married him. She had one true love in a country of women like her, whose sun took turns resting on their deep, dark skin. My true loves in our new country, by either inheritance or indoctrination, were taught that black women were the least among them. Loving me was an act of resistance, though many did not know it. And Mam could not understand this feeling, the heaviness of it, to be loved as resistance, as an exception to a rule. To fight to be seen in love, to stay in love throughout the resistance. This was my new country.”
― Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir

“The people tell you the fish not yours, but they yours too. Think real hard on all the names of fish you like saying. And the mountains. The sand. That water. It yours, you hear me?”
― Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King

“The instant he disappeared, the weight of the world could be heard and deeply felt—the marriage of whimpers, howls, groans, chastising, French, broken English, bare bottoms against bloodstained dirt, ropes against wrists, guns against palms, everything, everything, all of their sounds pulled him in.”
― Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King

“Was I the only one who could not tell the difference between a life in bondage and death?”
― Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King

“Alike spirits separated at great distances will always be bound to meet, even if only once; kindred souls will always collide; and strings of coincidences are never what they appear to be on the surface, but instead are the mask of God.”
― Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King

“I think, as women of color, especially women of color who come from some means, any means really, we tend to play down the unpleasant things we've experienced. To bury them ... Perfection or the desire for it, it becomes a mask ... a uniform. But there is something underneath. What's underneath makes us real.”
― Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir

“We did not have books on Emerson. That place where we lost our language, lost ourselves. They told us we had no history but darkness, so they kept the books away for fear we might understand the truth better, and thus find those lost selves.”
― Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King

“This was his mother. This was his poetic lo e, whose fallen shadow broke his spirit as he sprinted with the wind. She was gone.”
― Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King