"When the bugle of pleasure calls from within the kraal of Life, I shall go in first - but when the drum of death groans from within the kraal, please, Oh Life, would you care to go first."

"There is no rascal, however clever, who can be so clever as to lick the small of his own back."

"Strong are the Laws of the Tribe, but stronger still the laws of Nature."

"You are beholding the knot in the Cycle of Life, and it is here that you experience the truth of the philosophy that Life is but Death and Death is but Life. One only lives to die, and dies to live again."

"Fools are born to be tools of the wise."

"The only purpose of Life is Death. A man is born and before he dies he gets the opportunity to ensure that others after him will also be born and die. You may deceive yourself by thinking that there is more to life than birth, growth, mating, old age and death. But, sooner or later, Naked Truth makes itself apparent."

"There were, there are, and always will be, those with feelings for others."

"I, and the rest of my shackled race, led our lives like the beasts of burden we were; it was of no use for us to speculate or to dream, because daydreams make a slave's life more intolerable than the chains around his ankles and neck."

"My children, you cannot keep on storing up the wrath of a river without that river sweeping you along."

"There is nothing more saddening than a man deliberately blinding himself to the shimmering lake of reality. There is nothing more pathetic than the sight of a man who, on beholding a frowning mountain in the purple distance yonder, still insists that the mountain is not there - a man who, though standing knee-deep in a roaring river, still insists with stubborn conviction that he is standing on a sand dune in the Ka-Lahari."

"The moment of glory for an evil man is very short indeed."

"Lo! is it not said in our Words of Wisdom that 'evil hunts and destroys itself?'"

"The tree grows well and strong, Oh children mine,"

"“Look, they are all standing for her.”"

"Her willpower shattered against the rocks of desire and went flying into a million shards of rainbow-coloured crystal"

"(Curren, p. 5)"

"What deadlier betrayer is there than one's own body? What fouler enemy had the human being than desire that flows in his own veins? Marimba was lost."

"There is something known as hope, and that something has the habit of shining brightest when a man gets most hopelessly lost in the forest of fear and despair. Hope is a false star shining brightest on the darkest night of one's life."

"Give a Masai a stone and he will hit something or somebody with it. Give him any piece of wood and he will turn it into a club with which to brain you."

"You are all the same… You make a lot of wonderful resolutions, you swear a lot of oaths to do this and not to do that. You bind yourselves without first studying your secret natures – without knowing yourselves first. You never size up your ability to keep your oaths.”"

"When one has slandered an innocent man for many days with intent to destroy him one becomes scared when one learns that all one's lies have been exposed and the victim's name cleared of all the slime one hurled at it."

"The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."

"The only way to escape from your past is to become someone else. But who can you become? What other selves are there?"

"has been composed facing east into the rising sun and in a mood of poignant regret (poindre, to pierce) that I am rooted in the evening lands."

"The bushveld is full of stories, stories without end. You can't stop them. They come out of the trees, they come out of the rocks, they come out of the earth."

"guns save us from the fear that all life is within us"

"(chapter 1)"

"A few seconds, that is all. Later, it will always seem much longer."

"I am not a hunter, I am a story-teller. It's not my job to kill, it's my job to tell stories."

"Not a speck, not a stain on her gray school skirt and blue blouse to show what terrible thing had happened…If only by putting on something fresh and new, they could begin the day again.""

"The success of the family is born of a couple's harmony, as the harmony of multiple instruments creates a pleasant symphony."

"“The bully only gets away with it because others let him. They’ll have to lock me up before they shut me up.”"

"One is a mother to lighten the darkness. One is a mother to shield when lightning streaks the night, when thunder shakes the earth, when mud bogs one down. One is a mother in order to love without beginning or end."

"You can't live with your past, you can't live without it. That's the paradox of memory."

"You don't fell the tree whose shade protects you. You water it. You watch over it."

"You can feed your stomach as well as you please; it will still provide for itself without your knowing. ["

"“With Uncle Dele missing, they were now completely and utterly alone. If anyone asked where they came from and what they were doing, whatever should they say?”"

"Aggression and condescension in a woman arouse contempt and hatred for her husband. If she is gracious, even without appealing to any ideology, she can summon support for any action. In a word, a man's success depends on feminine support."

"The play of destiny remains impenetrable. The cowries that a female neighbour throws on a fan in front of me do not fill me with optimism, neither when they remain face upwards, showing the black hollow that signifies laughter, nor when the grouping of their whites seem to say that 'the man in the double trousers' is coming towards me."

"A woman is like a ball; once a ball is thrown, no one can predict where it will bounce. You have no control over where it rolls, and even less over who gets it. Often it is grabbed by an unexpected hand ..."

"You don't burn the tree which bears the fruit."

"Standing upright, her eyes meeting my disapproving look, she mutters between teeth reddened by cola nuts: 'Lady, death is just as beautiful as life has been' ["

"Each profession, intellectual or manual, deserves consideration, whether it requires painful physical or manual dexterity, wide knowledge or the patience of an ant. Ours, like that of the doctor, does not allow for any mistake. You don't joke with life, and life is both body and mind. To warp a soul is as much a sacrilege as murder."

"Whereas a woman draws from the passing years the force of her devotion, despite the ageing of her companion, a man, on the other hand, restricts his field of tenderness. His egoistic eye looks over his partner's shoulder. He compares what he had with what he no long has, what he has with what he could have."

"Again, I think: heart massage, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, ridiculous weapons against the divine will."

"Clothed in my dignity, the only worthy garment, I go my way."

"The most humble of huts is pleasing when it is clean; the most luxurious setting offers no attraction if it is covered in dust."

"Each life has its share of heroism, an obscure heroism, born of abdication, of renunciation and acceptance under the merciless whip of fate."

"To overcome distress when it sits upon you demands strong will. When one thinks that with each passing second one's life is shortened, one must profit intensely from this second; it is the sum of all the lost or harvested seconds that makes for a wasted or a successful life. Brace oneself to check despair and get it into proportion! A nervous breakdown waits around the corner for anyone who lets himself wallow in distress. Little by little, it takes over your whole being."

"The Boers are a strange people. They are afraid of the wilderness, yet they live in it. They are afraid of the black people, yet they need them. They are afraid of the future, yet they are always looking forward."