Yvonne Vera Quotes
1964–2005 Zimbabwe
Dr. Yvonne Vera (19 September 1964 – 7 April 2005) was an author from Zimbabwe.
- Zimbabwe
- Authors
- Novelists
- Short story writers
Also known as: Butterfly Burning
Random Yvonne Vera quote
14 quotes
Fumbatha could never be the beginning or end of all her yearning.
Butterfly Burning (1998)
The work is not their own: it is summoned. The time is not theirs: it is seized. The ordeal is their own.
Butterfly Burning (1998)
"I always need to be anchored in such a way that I am inside a character."
How can words be made still [in writing], without turning into silence? Silence is more to be feared than the agitation of voices.
"The land cannot be owned. We cannot give him any land because the land does not belong to the living."
If not freedom then rhythm.
Butterfly Burning (1998)
She cried, and the women sang her back to sleep, willing a silence onto her. She defied them with her tiny speech-seeking voice and cried all day and all night until her mother fell asleep.
I would love to be remembered as a writer who had no fear for words and who had an intense love for her nation
"If speaking is still difficult to negotiate, then writing has created a free space for most women -much freer than speech. The book is bound, circulated, read. It retains its autonomy much more than a woman is allowed in the oral situation."
The books I write try to undo the silent posture African women have endured over so many decades
"What were our lives compared to the survival of the earth on which we stood?"
My tales are tragic, rather than sad, meaning they have a catastrophic force
I was asked by the publisher if I had more stories. I said 'yes' haphazardly, though I had none. He asked for them. Therefore I set out to write them
"Time is as necessary for remembering as it is for forgetting. Even the smallest embrace of pain needs time larger than a pause; the greatest pause requires an eternity, the greatest hurt a lifetime. A lifetime is longer than eternity: an eternity can exist without human presence."