Aminatta Forna Quotes

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

All liars ... lie to protect themselves, to shield their egos from the raw pain of truth.

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.

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.

I was brought up in a household where you stood up to be counted.

Jung Chang was the first person to tell a grand historical, political story through a personal narrative.

A dread filled me, a dread unlike any I had ever felt. Not the terror of God, or his angels, but the sickly fear of man.

I learned about women -- how we are made into the women we've become, how we shape ourselves, how we shape each other.

Yet what use against the deceit of a state are the memories of a child?

A life, a history, whole patterns of existence altered, simply by doing nothing. The silent lie. The act of omission.

What the best novels and novelists do is to offer a different way of seeing.