Quotes from Bernardine Evaristo

Penelope came to the conclusion that marrying someone when you're in love with them was perhaps not such a good idea, better to wait a few years (ten, twenty, thirty, never?) to see if you're still compatible after the passion has subsided and reality set in

So Bibi had been born a man and was now a woman, Megan had wondered, daren't ask, she might bite her head off And Megan was a woman who wondered if she should have been born a man, who was attracted to a woman who'd once been a man, who was now saying gender was full of misguided expectations anyway, even though she had herself transitioned from male to female This was such head fuckery

life was different before 9/11, Waris said, as they left the town behind and walked along a busy main road passing big old houses made of thick slabs of grey stone; she was too young to remember the 'before era', when her mother said people looked at hijabbed women with surprise, curiosity or pity

I wish you were around to be her grandma, to tell her what it was like for you growing up, and stories about me from when I was too young to remember

we are all part a continuum, repeat after me, the future is in the past and the past is in the present

Thereafter she saw his intellectual showmanship as a performance, deep down he could be as vulnerable as anyone

she runs for her life because to slip up is to begin descending the slippery slope to giving in to failure, to inertia, to feeling sorry for herself about that moment in her life which still creeps to the front of her memory when she least expects it

he never fails to amuse her, never fails to be there for her when she wants him, to love her as she wants to be loved, to leave her alone when she needs solitude

she's got what she needs, not the same as what she wants

I'm not a babe to them, Ams, I'm an old-school has-been who's part of the problem, they don't respect me. Then you need to talk to them, Dom, and we should celebrate that many more women are reconfiguring feminism and that grassroots activism is spreading like wildfire and millions of women are waking up to the possibility of taking ownership of our world as fully-entitled human beings.

trans community is entitled to fight for their rights, you need to be more open-minded on that score or you'll risk becoming irrelevant, I've

her favourite writers are Olive Senior from Jamaica, Rosa Guy from Trinidad, Paule Marshall from Barbados, Jamaica Kincaid from Antigua, and Maryse Condé from Guadeloupe

I tell Mum she married a patriarch Look at it this way, Amma, she says, your father was born male in Ghana in the 1920s whereas you were born female in London in the 1960s And your point is? You really can't expect him to 'get you', as you put it I let her know she's an apologist for the patriarchy and complicit in a system that oppresses all women She says human beings are complex I tell her not patronize me

They decided they needed to start their own theatre company to have careers as actors, because neither was prepared to betray their politics to find jobs Or shut their mouths to keep them

Amma misses her daughter now she's away at university Not the spiteful snake that slithers out of her tongue to hurt her mother, because in Yazz's world young people are the only ones with feelings

they pile into the house in their party clothes: dresses showing off knees that should've gone undercover a long time ago, bellies spilling over belts, the younger ones wearing outfits so tight you can see their hearts beating

She's tied her amazingly wild, energetic, strong and voluminous Afro back because people sitting behind her in venues complain they can't see the stage When her afro'd compatriots accuse people of racism or microaggressions for this very reason, Yazz asks them how they'd feel if an unruly topiary hedge blocked their view of the stage at a concert?

It's also probably fair to say she was probably too young at thirteen to innocently open the drawer under his bed and come across a leather gas mask type thing with a leather dick attached where she presumed a nose should be, along with associated whips, gels, handcuffs and other unexplainable objects Unfortunately, once seen, never unseen and it was a lesson for her at a young age that you never know people until you've been through their drawers and computer history

That afternoon they ended up dancing to Amr Diab in Yazz's room Yazz tells Waris it's important to counterbalance the state of being cerebral with the state of being corporeal Waris asks her if she means they need to do physical activity because they spend too much time thinking? Yes, that's it, Yazz says, making elaborate movements with her arms as she dances Why didn't you just say that then?

the truth is that hierarchies of power and privilege won't disappear, every historian knows this, it's innate to human nature and inherent in all societies in all eras and equally manifests in the animal kingdom, so I can't pretend otherwise

this was her life now McStupid McFuckedUp McStuck McForever.

while troublemaking on the periphery's all well and good, we also have to make a difference inside the mainstream, we all pay taxes that fund these theatres, right? Sylvester

was never told off for speaking her mind, although she was told off for swearing because she needed to develop her vocabulary (Yazz, say you find Marissa unpleasant or unlikeable rather than describing her as a shit-faced smelly bottom) and although she didn't always get what she wanted, if she argued her case strongly enough, she was in with a chance Amma wanted her daughter to be free, feminist and powerful

She looks over at the Tate on the opposite side of the river, where she occasionally wanders the galleries to clear her head during lunchtime (when she takes one), to marvel at the ability of artists to make such mind-blowing creations out of their imagination Imagination What was that? Does she even have one?