Quotes from Alexandra Fuller

It was easy to leave Karoi. Karoi had always felt like a train station platform, a flat place from which we hoped to leave at any moment for somewhere more interesting and picturesque.

squinting thousand-yard stare of a person who has lived both in bright sunshine and among crocodiles and hippos his whole life.

although he knew very little about American history, or pop culture, he'd fundamentally understood the place, cut to its original wound. "A bit racialist, aren't they?" he'd observed.

cleavage is a liability in this climate

You can't look anywhere without accidentally seeing the news.

It was the time of night that precedes dawn and is without perspective or reason. It was the hour when regret and fear overwhelm hope and courage and when all that is ugly in us is magnified and when we are most panic-stricken by what we have lost, and what we have almost lost, and what we fear we might lose.

This is not a full circle. It's life carrying on. It's the next breath we all take. It's the choice we make to get on with it.

One of the things about being raised British in Africa is that you get this double whammy of toughness. The continent in place itself made you quite tough. And then you've got this British mother whose entire being rejects 'coddling' in case it makes you too soft. So there's absolutely nothing standing between you and a fairly rough experience.

In general, I almost always watch foreign films.

There are real consequences when women speak out. It's really dangerous, and it takes real courage. We are still speaking out against a white male majority. Forget the glass ceiling. We haven't even broken the glass floor!

Yes, as an oppressed people, American Indians have this epic burden, but first and foremost, they're human: sometimes a mess, sometimes funny or sad, at times very wise, and other times not wise at all - a lot like me.

In retrospect, I have come to recognise just how astounding my mother was during our childhood. She kept a woodwork shop and made beautiful furniture, as well as raising the pair of us in a society dominated by men. There really is nothing like war to reveal the power of patriarchy, but she always retained her independence.

For a memoir to really succeed, the author has to do such hard work before they come to the page. They have to do a brutal self-examination of everything they believe to be true.

Oh, I don't keep a journal. How you remember an incident is dictated by your emotional state at the time. How you receive the information that is coming in is definitely based on your history and who you are.

Everyone says marriage is hard work, but they don't tell you that actually being yourself and respecting yourself is hard work.

I want to make words out of life. That's bigger than me. That's as big a creative force as - bigger than, for me, even having children. That felt more accidental - wonderful, but accidental.

There's a point at which writing a book, or a long article, begins to feel like mental labor, and it's too painful to connect in the world in any real way mid-process. The only way to survive is to write until it is all said and done.

I love my mother so much, because I see the whole of her.

I did not know that for the things that unhorse you, for the things that wreck you, for the things that toy with your internal tide - against those things, there is no conventional guard.

The most basic human impulse is toward entropy and laziness. The less we have to do to grow spiritually, the more likely we are to do it.

You can have an intense connection to someone without being a good, lifelong mate for him. Love is complicated and difficult that way.

It is the perpetual tragedy of all families: each of us believe our congenital pathologies and singular pains end with us.

I always knew mum loved me - tough, look-after-yourself love, as if she knew she wouldn't always be there.

I adore my family. I don't love their politics. I think they're wonderful parents. They were dreadful at parenting.