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Peter Abrahams Quotes
1919–2017 South Africa
Peter Henry Abrahams Deras (3 March 1919 – 18 January 2017), commonly known as Peter Abrahams, was a South African-born novelist, journalist and political commentator who in 1956 settled in Jamaica, where he lived for the rest of his life.
South Africa Journalists Novelists Also known as: A Wreath for Udomo, Mine Boy, Tell freedom
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I pushed my nose and lip...I was inside the raindrop away from the misery of the cold damp room. I was in a place of warmth and sunshine, inside my raindrop world.
Tell Freedom (1954)
No! I don't want you to touch me.
Mine Boy (1946)
He's just a mine boy ... Yes. Grand, but not a human being yet. Just a mine boy.
Mine Boy (1946)
He (Roderiques) was hungry and homeless. So I fed him. He told me something had gone wrong and he had to leave the Roman school. He said he had no people.
Tell Freedom (1954)
A strange group of people, these, he thought. Nothing tied them down. They seem to believe in nothing. But well, they had given him a bed. She had given it to him. She who was the strangest of them all.
Mine Boy (1946)
In the name of civilization, the dignity and worth of the African people has been grossly underrated, their progress retarded and aspirations frustrated, and the whole life undermined. They are compelled to live in appalling conditions of squalor, filth and isolation...
Tell Freedom (1954)
You are Colored. There are three kinds of people: white people, Colored people, and black people. The white people come first, then the Colored people, then the black people. Lee asks “Why?” but Aunt’s answer is, “Because it is so.
Tell Freedom (1954)
It was difficult for the Africans most of whom had taken European education and embraced Christian religion, to revert to the rapidly dying, outdated traditions and customs of their forefathers
Tell Freedom (1954)
In that time I had been accused of theft, I had been called all the pet names of abuse reserved by whites for blacks; I had carried heavy loads to the tram stop, and women had conveniently forgotten to pay.
Tell Freedom (1954)
It is not enough to destroy, you must build as well. Build up a stock of faith in your breast in native Zuma, mine boy, who has no social conscience, who cannot read or write and cannot understand his wanting what you want. **Page 69.
Mine Boy (1946)
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