Alice Mutasa

“When the last feather has gone, and your woman body has grown full, remember that you remain a bird inside. You have not forgotten how to fly. For what is more woman than holding death and life, sky and earth in your body same time, to fly while earthbound?”
― Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, When We Were Birds

“Grave is home, grave is lineage. Grave is to know where your people is, even if you can't see them anymore.”
― Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, When We Were Birds

“Plus les pays sont pauvres, plus leur marchés sont riches (the poorer the country, the richer their markets)”
― Erik Orsenna, Madame Bâ

“You look for your faces, your history, some representation, anywhere—and you have to sort of take what you can get, badly done as it is. I got tired. No one was going to write our stories. How could I only write about the English moors and fantastical places and wait for an outsider to misrepresent my people? I want to write about those places, but I’m not going to wait for someone to write about my home. I’m going to make a lot of mistakes probably, not out of malice or deliberate ignorance, not out of lying—but I’d rather make my own mistakes than get angry when others do it for us. I’m not looking to wow or shock readers with what I write, or creating an uproar. What I care about is not being deliberately or accidentally unkind to others, or to further alienate those who are already being alienated.”
― Khadija Abdalla Bajaber