12 quotes
Instead of being kind and buying this and that for the maid, just translate the kindness to this woman’s wages […]
Living Loving and Lying Awake at Night (1991)
One boy. Lost. Hopelessly lost. One girl, far away from home. The enactment of the deep, dark, private yearnings of a subjugated race. The consummation of inevitable senseless catastrophe.
Mother to Mother (1998)
Today, no one knows the name of the little girl found in a rubbish drum at the back of the butcher’s shop. They don’t know it today, for they never knew it then
Living Loving and Lying Awake at Night (1991)
She would fulfil her obligations as she understood them and provide for them. The only way she could be a mother to her children, she saw, would be to leave them
Living Loving and Lying Awake at Night (1991)
The sun went and died in the west.
Mother to Mother (1998)
No,’ the girl’s mother said quietly. ‘There were many people there. Looking. Some were even laughing. None stopped the crime, none. Until your son arrived on the scene.
Mother to Mother (1998)
Your daughter. The imperfect atonement of her race. My son. The perfect host of the demons of his.
Mother to Mother (1998)
There was nothing unusual about this. Mxolisi, now four years old, could already tell the difference between the bang! of a gun firing and the Gooph! of a burning skull cracking, the brain exploding.
Mother to Mother (1998)
Unganyebelezeli, kuza kudlalwa!’ piped Mxolisi’s little voice, calling for daring and defiance. To look at him do the war cry of the Comrades, poised in a defiant stance, his tiny fist up in the air, couldn’t but send all those who heard him into paroxysms of laughter.
Mother to Mother (1998)
There are not enough mothers during the day to force the children to go to school and stay there for the whole day. The mothers are at work. Or they are drunk. Defeated by life. Dead. We die young, these days.
Mother to Mother (1998)
Mxolisi turned one year. A part of me hated him. Not him . . . but what he was . . . had been . . . the effect he seemed to have on my life. Always negative, always cheating me of something I desperately wanted. I shrunk; because he was.
Mother to Mother (1998)
Tatomkhulu was a fund of facts that, although seemingly different, made a whole lot of sense of some of the things we learned at school. He explained what had seemed stupid decisions, and acts that had seemed indefensible became not only understandable but highly honourable.
Mother to Mother (1998)