Aminatta Forna famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

If you want to know a country, read its writers.
-- Aminatta Forna

#Country #Want
What ultimately happened is that my country had a war. I think it would be extraordinary, as a writer, not to want to write about that.
-- Aminatta Forna

#Country #War #Writing
I was brought up in a household where you stood up to be counted.
-- Aminatta Forna

#Stood Up #Household
Jung Chang was the first person to tell a grand historical, political story through a personal narrative.
-- Aminatta Forna

#Political #Historical #Firsts
The Watch is a powerful tale, courageous both in concept and creation: an ancient tale made modern, passed through different narrators in extraordinary shape-shifting prose that makes this not just an important novel, but a remarkable read.
-- Aminatta Forna

#Powerful #Important #Shifting
All liars ... lie to protect themselves, to shield their egos from the raw pain of truth.
-- Aminatta Forna

#Pain #Liars #Lying
War had the effect of encouraging people to try to stay alive. Poverty, too. Survival was simply too hard-won to be given up lightly.
-- Aminatta Forna

#War #People #Survival

American statesmen might like some Europeans more than others and even detect quaint resemblances to their own outlook; but they no more committed themselves to a particular group or country than a nineteenth-century missionary committed himself to the African tribe in which he happened to find himself.
We are apt to say that a foreign policy is successful only when the country, or at any rate the governing class, is united behind it. In reality, every line of policy is repudiated by a section, often by an influential section, of the country concerned. A foreign minister who waited until everyone agreed with him would have no foreign policy at all.
I think in this country we're committed to developing plays, and many plays I've seen have been rewritten too much. The scenes are tight, the play ends at the right time, you know exactly what the scene is about, but it seems flat; you can almost see that too many hands have been on the play. The individual voice is gone.
To Lawren Harris art was almost a mission. He believed that a country which ignored the arts left no record of itself worth preserving.
Even if my country remains in war with yours. . .remember. . . i am not your enemy.
Fifty-seven countries in the world, a third of the United Nations, do not recognize Israel. In a way, I think North Korea has better international relations than Israel.
We like to see death as an unfair conspiracy, and what we want is a magic practitioner, a combination of Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes.
Today I am in control because I want to be. I have my fingers on the switch, but have lived a lifetime ignoring the control I have over my own world. Today is different.
Keep working hard and you can get anything that you want.
If you want to go to the mall, you have to take security. But it's always cool. The kids are amazing.

Aminatta Forna famous quotes

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