Women Authors

"With you I have rediscovered simple words,rediscovered the joy of evenings spent chat-ting, nights spent holding hands, hoping for acity that will not leave behind a bitter taste ofdefeat in the mornings. Maybe together, wewill make it. Please, do not reproach me for unleashing a storm upon this sleepy city, formislaying dreams made of rare pearls and fe-tish gold"

"...love is the colour of hope. Bitter today, sweet tomorrow. You should not throw away your wealth of tenderness and let the honey-filled caresses dry up. Do not be wicked just to prove who you are, just to expose your wounds to the skies."

"I think of my country, far away, and my eyes open beyond space."

"As the dream of my country, which obsesses me all the time. I carry it with me all day. At night, it lies next to me, making love to me."

"I searched for such a long time. At the begin-ning, an image, an ebony-warrior coming fromAzania. Then it was like a three-way mirror re-flecting my past, present and future. I searchedfor you everywhere: in my books, at the cine-ma, within my weaknesses, under the finefolds of my smile"

"It is definitely a century that hangs its head in shame. Our elders have been called impotent, and we are accused of being ‘limp’…"

"Here there are no griots, only poets. You think that you are leading an extraordinary life and that people see you as you would like them to. You adorn yourself with your writing. It becomes your identity, your bread and butter, and your reason for living. You begin to believe in what people say. You become locked up in your creation, become submerged in words, and sentences suffocate you in the solitude of your retreat. They make you forget the blood and the dust."

"You should listen to those whose voices remain unheard although the wisdom they carry is shaped by their closeness to the earth. No refined language but the pace of life at a gallop refashioned outmoded images, well-worn phrases, and ways of thinking that are out of date."

"If you want to love ,Do so to the ends of the earth With no shortcuts Do so as the crow flies."

"It is a matter of infrastructure and superstructure. The problem must be analyzed in the specific context of the country. A lot of progress has been made. We are no longer the way we used to be."

"African tradition of storytelling which gives me a great freedom of interpretation of our myths and legends, greatly inspires me."

"I think African Literature is doing very well. It’s got a lot of exposure on the international fair but what is interesting about it is that its looking at different themes, various themes and that makes it more complex and richer."

"You need to look at the place without emotion to be rational. What does this place have to offer? What does the other place have?."

"It's only when we work together that we can defeat such threats to humanity. So I think that I would really, really like to see more solidarity within each country and across countries."

"The challenge is that sometimes if you are a writer you might get completely enmeshed. People want you to take sides. When there is a problem they always want you to take sides. I don’t really like it."

"Many people have mistakenly believed that military coups can have a progressive aspect to them. This is because, in the face of the power grab, the option of legality is no longer possible."

"There are many types of documents that influence us, that have their own lives. It is these documents that inform reality, and help us understand by indirect means what happened."

"I check to see if there is any mail for me. Stamps from my coun-try. I pick up the newspaper. Here, there is a great dealof talk about South Africa"

"For me, literature is the place for all concerns. It is the act of reading, the act of writing and the act of engaging in deep reflection."

"Of course, it is fiction. It’s a style that I like. It’s not a very nice term but it is called faction. So you come from reality and fictionalize it."

"I would say that although the monarchy has sometimes been challenged, it is nevertheless firmly rooted in the social fabric."

"We must perform cleansing rites. Make the necessary sacrifices. We must replant our huge trees that have been uprooted, replenish our sacred forests that have been decimated."

"I have always been fascinated by Nigeria because it is our neighbour. And you have so much to offer. I even wrote a book when I was in Nigeria. I tried to discover as much as I could because you are good with all the arts in Nigeria, traditional, modern and contemporary."

"People do not necessarily need a sovereign, but they certainly need someone who embodies a higher idea of the nation."

"Pour libation, summon the gods,utter sacred words, assemble diviners and sorcerers recapture the present, make peace, return to the earth,the spell"

"He left his vast country inAfrica. Now he lives in the big city of stone. And it isbetter for him, this exile. An exile where the inhabi-tants have respect for a white stick, where the stateensures his wellbeing and where facilities enable himto read and write"

"The flavours were rounded, the seasoning was on point and her dishes were so distinct and original. She has a near-unique ability to turn an idea into a plate of food without distorting her original vision, which is where I think her genius lies ( Lieutenant Gordon Ramsay of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay)"

"I’ll never forget the first time I ate at Core, lt was an emotional night. We’d brought some good friends with us, but I couldn’t focus on entertaining them – all I had in my mind was the journey Clare had been on, which I could follow through her food."

"In my travels, from land to land, I never encountered the paradise I had hoped for. But sometimes, at least, I captured a few glimpses of earthly happiness from afar, and now this has a greater value for me than any imaginary paradise"

"I am a servant leader, creating impact through the media, literature and in the technology industries."

"We stood for military discipline and surgical precision in everything that we did, and if you slipped from those standards, you were gone – and somebody else would be waiting to take your job. Kitchen life was testosterone-fuelled, with dozens of chefs jostling for Gordon’s attention."

"“Я стала пояснювати йому різниці між нами та руськими, нарисувала мапу України та її сусідніх країн, щоб він краще зрозумів її положення, врешті, сказала я, що нас є біля сорока мільйонів та що Україна у півтора раза більша за Францію. Ці всі пояснення я знаю краще за молитву, бо частенько трапляється мені повторювати їх французам та іншим чужинцям, що нічого не знають про наше існування.“"

"The novels and essays of Natalia Ginzburg (among them, The Manzoni Family and The Little Virtues) address both her Sephardic ancestry and her leftist political philosophy."

"⁃ У понеділок? — лінькувато перепитав Цвичок. - Понеділок, ґаздику, тяжкий день. Хоч у узимі, хоч уліті."

"It wasn’t for everyone, but I knew it was for me, because I wanted to be the best, and I refused to let anything distract me from that aim. Gordon was, and still is, a brilliant mentor. He was always fair, even if he was very blunt about it – he just wanted perfection."

"На відміну від Петра І, який «прорубав» Російській імперії «вікно» в Європу, Україні цього не потрібно було робити, бо вона вже була Європою. Проте в якийсь момент цей зв'язок був забутий."

"He knew how to find time to study and to write, to earn his living and to wander idly through the streets he loved; whereas we, who staggered from laziness to frantic activity and back again, wasted our time trying to decide whether we were lazy or industrious"

"Our dreams are never realized and as soon as we see them betrayed we realize that the intensest joys of our life have nothing to do with reality. No sooner do we see them betrayed than we are consumed with regret for the time when they glowed within us. And in this succession of hopes and regrets our life slips by."

"This woman is relentless, and in that pursuit of perfection, the exciting thing about Clare’s demeanour is that she carries no passengers – she has a drive that cannot be bought or taught. But more than this, she has an understanding of finesse and style like few others; she cooks with attitude and personality, and that’s rarer than you’d think."

"if we ourselves have a vocation, if we have not betrayed it, if over the years we have continued to love it, to serve it passionately, we are able to keep all sense of ownership out of our love for our children. But if on the other hand we do not have a vocation, or if we have abandoned it or betrayed it out of cynicism or a fear of life, or because of mistaken parental love, or because of some little virtue that exists within us, then we cling to our children as a shipwrecked mariner clings to a tree trunk."

"Human relationships have to be rediscovered every day. We have to remember constantly that every kind of meeting with our neighbor is a human action and so it is always evil or good, true or deceitful, a kindness or a sin."

"(prompt: "The book that changed my life") I was well into my 30s when I read The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg and as soon as I began I felt myself deeply connected. It isn’t that it’s the greatest book in the world, but for me it was vital. I felt she was showing me the type of writer I had it in me to be. One of the essays – “My Vocation” – really hit the nail on the head. I identified profoundly with the way in which Ginzburg traced her own development as a nonfiction writer. It made me realise that it was only through this kind of writing I could employ my own storytelling gifts. I reread it irregularly but quite a lot, and I’m always amazed by what she is able to accomplish with the small personal essay."

"When I write something I usually think it is very important and that I am a very fine writer. I think this happens to everyone. But there is one corner of my mind in which I know very well what I am, which is a small, a very small writer. I swear I know it. But that doesn't matter much to me. Only, I don't want to think about names: I can see that if I am asked 'a small writer like who?' it would sadden me to think of the names of other small writers. I prefer to think that no one has ever been like me, however small, however much a mosquito or a flea of a writer I may be. The important thing is to be convinced that this really is your vocation, your profession, something you will do all your life."

"What we must remember above all in the education of our children is that their love of life should never weaken."

"I believe the family to be terribly important, even when it is obsessive or repressive or full of insidious germs which can pollute life. But it’s a necessary institution, a way in which children become adults, for which there’s no substitute."

"Every time I sit down to write a book I feel that I have to start from zero, that I have to re-learn how to write."

"(PB: You wrote your essay “The Little Virtues” a long time ago, really in another age. A number of American readers are very much taken with the piece while finding it a direct challenge to their familiar assumptions. Would you still offer parents the same advice with regard to the upbringing of their children or have your thoughts changed?) NG: I’m sure that I would write exactly the same thing; even in these difficult times one should only teach the big virtues, generosity more than anything else. The rest can be learned later on."

"unfortunately, a great number of judges and social workers are rigidly unable to judge cases in a human way."

"I loved raising the bar every single day, pushing my team to get better and better with each challenge. Clare was one of the very few chefs who not only met that bar but soared right past it and came back asking for more. It was her hunger that set her apart"

"in my own work...there’s an important sense of the visual, of the visualized. I see it all so vividly. It’s not that I don’t see what I imagine. If I don’t see it then I can’t write anything."