Ousmane Sembène’s Awesome Quotes
“L’Afrique ne se développera pas sans la participation concrète de la femme. La conception que nos pères avaient de la femme doit être enterrée une fois pour toutes. [The development of Africa will not happen without the effective participation of women. Our forefathers’ image of women must be buried once for all.]”
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“At a moral level, I don’t think we have any lesson to learn from Europe.”
“I benefited from a synthesis of values–in the house, the compound, the country and Koranic and French schools. We conserved our own culture; we had nightly gatherings with tales. Now I call it my own theater.”
“Bread came wrapped in French newspapers. Each time my father unwrapped a baguette, he asked me to read to him.”
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“In the army we saw those who considered themselves our masters naked, in tears, some cowardly or ignorant. When a white soldier asked me to write a letter for him, it was a revelation–I thought all Europeans knew how to write. The war demystified the colonizer; the veil fell.”
“Real misfortune is not just a matter of being hungry and thirsty; it is a matter of knowing that there are people who want you to be hungry and thirsty”
― God’s Bits of Wood
“At the moment the eyes of the body closed, the eyes of the mind were opened.”
― God’s Bits Of Wood
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“Ever since they left Thies, the women had not stopped singing. As soon as one group allowed the refrain to die, another picked it up, and new verses were born at the hazard of chance or inspiration, one word leading to another and each finding, in its turn, its rhythm and its place. No one was very sure any longer where the song began, or if it had an ending. It rolled out over its own length, like the movement of a serpent. It was as long as a life.”
― God’s Bits of Wood
“However long it stays in the river the tree-trunk will never turn into a crocodile.”
― Xala
“A cool breeze laden with iodine blew in from the sea.”
― Xala
