On The Memory of Love

Aminatta Forna, The Memory of Love

- To be surrounded by languages you don't understand. Of how it must, in some ways, be like being deaf. The deaf children he knew, whose parents sometimes came to see him, became remote, cut off, even inside their own families. Silent islands. -

- 'Is it true,' says the child Abass, voice juddering as he bounces on the car's back seat, 'that the number of stars in the sky is infinity? -

- Most of the people who write those things never leave their hotel rooms, they're too afraid. And wouldn't know the difference between a Mendeman and a Fulaman. But still they write the same story over and over. It's easier that way. And who is there to contradict them? -

- After the lovemaking, she'd pulled away, withdrawing her body from him. Suddenly no longer inside her, he experienced the sensation as a shock. An abandonment. -

- People think war is the worst this country has ever seen: they have no idea what peace is like. The courage it takes simply to endure. -

- 'This is their reality. And who is going to come and give the people who live here therapy to cope with this?" asks Attila and waves a hand at the view. 'You call it a disorder, my friend. We call it life.'