Quotes from Tayeb Salih

Once again there was the feeling that the ordinary things before one's very eyes were becoming unordinary.

He is no towering oak tree with luxuriant branches growing in a land on which Nature has bestowed water and fertility; rather he is like the sayal bushes in the deserts of the Sudan, thick of bark and sharp of thorn, defeating death because they ask so little of life.

It was as though they wanted to say: Look how tolerant and liberal we are! This African is just like one of us! He has married a daughter of ours and works with us on an equal footing! If only you knew, this sort of European is no less evil than the madmen who believe in the supremacy of the white man in South Africa and in the southern states of America. The same exaggerated emotional energy bears either to the extreme right or to the extreme left.