Yvonne Vera Quotes

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.

We walked in wisdom with our shadows, in search of the dead part of ourselves, which would be our shelter.

I am the inheritor of a proud tradition. If contemporaries don’t chase the ghosts of Chinua Achebe, James Baldwin, Charles Mungoshi, Stanlake Samkange, Yvonne Vera and other makers of the great tradition, what are we doing here?

For me writing is light, a radiance that captures everything in a fine profile. This light searches and illuminates, it is a safe place from which to uncover the emotional havoc of our experience. Light is a bright warmth which heals. Writing can be this kind of light.