The Fishermen Quotes

“Hatred is a leech: The thing that sticks to a person's skin; that feeds off them and drains the sap out of one's spirit. It changes a person, and does not leave until it has sucked the last drop of peace from them.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“The things my brother read shaped him; they became his visions. He believed in them. I have now come to know that what one believes often becomes permanent, and what becomes permanent can be indestructible. This was the case with my brother.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“Listen, days decay, like food, like fish,
like dead bodies. This night will decay, too and you will forget. Listen, we will forget.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“That story, as all good stories, planted a seed in my soul and never left me.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“English, although the official language of Nigeria, was a formal language with which strangers and non-relatives addressed you. It had the potency of digging craters between you and your friends or relatives if one of you switched to using it. So, our parents hardly spoke English, except in moments like this, when the words were intended to pull the ground from beneath our feet.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“I once heard that when fear takes possession of the heart of a person, it diminishes them”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“The prophecy, like an angered beast, had gone berserk and was destroying his mind with the ferocity of madness . . . until all that he knew, all that was him, all that had become him was left in disarray. To my brother, Ikenna, the fear of death as prophesied by Abulu had become palpable, a caged world within which he was irretrievably trapped, and beyond which nothing else existed.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“Although Christianity had almost cleanly swept through Igbo land, crumbs and pieces of the African traditional religion had eluded the broom.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“Mother was a falconer. The one who stood on the hills and watched, trying to stave off whatever ill she perceived was coming to her children. She owned copies of our minds in the pockets of her own mind and so could easily sniff troubles early in their forming, the same way sailors discern the forming foetus of a coming storm.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“I have now come to know that what one believes often becomes permanent, and what become permanent can be indestructible.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“As I watched the men throw more earth into the grave, I dug into the cold soil of my own mind, and it became suddenly clear—the way things always become clearer only after they have happened—that Ikenna was a fragile delicate bird; he was a sparrow. Little things could unbridle his soul. Wistful thoughts often combed his melancholic spirit in search of craters to be filled with sorrow. As a younger boy, he often sat in the backyard, brooding and contemplative, his arms clasped over his knees. He was highly critical of things, a part of him that greatly resembled Father. He nailed small things to big crosses and would ponder for long on a wrong word he said to someone; he greatly dreaded the reprove of others. He had no place for ironies or satires; they troubled him.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“L’odio è una sanguisuga: la cosa che si appiccica alla pelle di una persona; che se ne nutre e prosciuga la linfa dallo spirito. Cambia una persona, e non se ne va finché non le ha succhiato via l’ultima goccia di pace.”
― Chigozie Obioma, Os pescadores

“I'd once been told that if a man wanted something he did not have, no matter how elusive that thing was, if his feet do not restrain him from chasing it, he would eventually grab it. This was our case.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“I'd heard someone say that the end of most things often bears a resemblance - even if faint - to their beginnings”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“I realize that it was during one of those trips to the river that our lives and our world changed. For it was here the time began to matter.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“All we did for the rest of that evening was sing, the dying sun pitched in a corner of the sky as faint as a nipple on the chest of a teenage girl a distance away.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“Una volta ho sentito dire che quando la paura s’impossessa del cuore di una persona la impoverisce. Questo si può dire di mio fratello, perché quando la paura prese possesso del suo cuore lo derubò di molte cose: la pace, il benessere, i legami, la salute, e perfino la fede.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“The things my brother read shaped him; they became his visions. He believed in them. I have now come to know that what one believes often becomes permanent, and what becomes permanent can be indestructible.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“I once heard that when fear takes possession of the heart of a person, it diminishes them. This could be said of my brother, for when the fear took possession of his heart, it robbed him of many things - his peace, his well-being, his relationships, his health, and even his faith.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“Ikenna was a fragile, delicate bird; he was a sparrow. Little things could unbridle his soul. Wistful thoughts often combed his melancholic spirit in search of craters to be filled with sorrow.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“Even his voice had accrued a certain rancour as though the detritus of words long left unsaid inside the cave of his mouth had become rusty and scattered in tiny bits on the top of his tongue whenever he opened his mouth to speak.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“Do you not know that there is nothing the eye can see that can make it shed the tears of blood? Do you not know that there is no loss we cannot overcome?”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“when the two ventricles of our home—our father and our mother—held silence as the ventricles of the heart retain blood, we could flood the house if we poked them.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“English, although the official language of Nigeria, was a formal language with which strangers and non-relatives addressed you. It had the potency of digging craters between you and your friends or relatives if one of you switched to using it.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“He was seated alone on a lounge chair in the sitting room, his face veiled with a copy of his favourite newspaper, the Guardian, half reading and half listening to Mother.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“But it was abundant in Canada like leaves in a forest.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“He mostly told me stories at night-time, in the near darkness of the room, and I gradually burrowed into the world his words created.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“I have now come to know that what one believes often becomes permanent, and what becomes permanent can be indestructible. This”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“But we could not, for if one attempted to look into the future one would see nothing; it was like peeping into a person’s earhole.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen

“He spoke slowly, his voice deeper and louder, every word tacked nine inches deep into the beams of our minds.”
― Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen