Barbette

“He sang it in his mind, and walked to its beat. If the song ended on his right foot, his mother was alive. If it ended on his left, she was dead. No, not dead, but ill. It ended on the right. She was alive and well. He sang the son again, and it ended on the left. But the second time did not count. The first voice gets to Chukwu, or God's house. That was a favorite saying of children. Ikemuna felt like a child once more. It must be the thought of going home to his mother.”
― Chinua Achebe

“The oldest man present said sternly that those whose palm-kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.”
― Chinua Achebe, THINGS FALL APART

“How can a sentient person of the modern age mistake photography for reality? All perception is selection, and all photographs--no matter how objectively journalistic the photographer's intent--exclude aspects of the moment's complexity. Photographs economize the truth; they are always moments more or less illusorily abducted from time's continuum.”
― Sally Mann, Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs

“I am Evil Forest. I kill a man on the day that his life is sweetest to him.”
― Chinua Achebe, THINGS FALL APART