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Bessie Head

103 quotes

“The victim is really the most flexible, the most free person on earth. He doesn't have to think up endless laws and endless falsehoods. His jailer does that. His jailer creates the chains and the oppression. He is merely presented with it. He is presented with a thousand and one hells to live through, and he usually lives through them all.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who is the greater man - the man who cries, broken by anguish, or his scoffing, mocking, jeering oppressor?”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'God isn't a magical formula for me,' ... 'God isn't a switched-on, mysterious, unknown current. I can turn to and, by doing so, feel secure in my own nobility.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is so powerful, it's like unseen flowers under your feet as you walk.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The year ended in a roar of pain.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You don't realize the point at which you become evil.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The loud, pounding rhythm of his drama drummed in her ears day and night.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I did a lot of reading on my own because I loved that particular world. You open up a book and you learn about something that's much more exciting than your everyday grind, a world of magic beyond your own. And I feel that the beginnings of writing really start whereby you know that when you open a book there's a magical world there.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“when there is a tragedy, detail and a picture of the country emerges because people discuss it so much.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You could really say that my writing experience began in Botswana. Everything about the society was magical to me and the reason I began writing is that I wanted to communicate that fascination I felt for the ways of life of the people of this country. It is almost impossible for a writer to evoke a similar feeling of magic and wonder about South Africa. It's too despairing.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my novel, A Question of Power, I was extremely bothered to define evil. I was looking for answers all along to questions of exploitation. And I was looking for balances; that is, if we have to live with good and evil we ought to present them as they really are.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was born on the sixty of July, 1937, in the Pietermaritzburg Mental Hospital, in South Africa. The reason for my peculiar birthplaces was that my mother was white, and she had acquired me from a black man. She was judged insane, and committed to the mental hospital while pregnant. Her name was Bessie Emery and I consider it the only honor South African officials ever did me—naming me after this unknown, lovely, and unpredictable woman.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have always been just me, with no frame of reference to anything beyond myself.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whatever my manifold disorders are, I hope to get them sorted out pretty soon, because I've just got to tell a story.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a cold and loveless country like South Africa his warmth of heart and genuine friendliness is like a great roaring fire on the white icy wastes of the Antarctic.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“TELL THEM HOW NATURAL, SENSIBLE, NORMAL IS HUMAN KINDNESS. TELL THEM, THOSE WHO JUDGE MY COUNTRY, AFRICA, BY GAIN AND GREED, THAT THE GODS WALK ABOUT HER BAREFOOT WITH NO ERMINE AND GOLD-STUDDED CLOAKS”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I feel in my heart that our Pharaoh has already been born. It may be that I shall not live to see Pharaoh's day but I want all those who now live in anguish to be comforted. For one day, due to the length of his roots and the depth of his wisdom, all nations shall dwell under his shadow.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You have a beautiful soul that was nurtured on a dung heap.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you think life will care about you if you do not show that you care about it?”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They pursued their love with a wild abandon, unprotected against the treachery of the insecure foundation on which it was based and too young to bridge the gap that would suddenly and unexpectedly fling them miles apart.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People don't fall in love these days. The movies have made that kind of thing stale. They have robbed us of our capacity to feel through feeding us with cheap sensation. Ask any man and he will tell you that he can't kiss his wife because she wants him to kiss her the way Richard Widmark kisses.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The whole principle of living and learning is dependent on what is going on in the mind. The mind is like a huge, living tapestry. Everything we see, hear, learn and experience gets being imprinted on it. As we grow we begin to see that we can correlate those impressions into a definite pattern and so we call that our life.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life's one hell of a joke. It dresses us up with insatiable yearnings and high-flying ambitions and then flings the fact of our insignificance in our faces. Half of us fall for the joke and start the mad rush after the big prizes. Some, like you and me can't fall for the joke. We've been hit too hard at too early an age.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Above all the necessities of life, human beings need love and it is often the one thing most denied to them.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are young and might prefer to believe that love is moonlight and rosy sunsets. It is not. It is brutal, violent, ugly, possessive and dictatorial. It makes no allowances for the freedom and individuality of the loved one. Lovers become one closely knit unit in thought and feeling. Should you eventually find that this love is beyond your capacity or that you cannot rise to its demands, you may leave but please make sure that you go to some place where I will never be able to find you.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Once a man involves himself with women there's always some kind of retribution. They're the most vengeful creatures on this earth.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's only one way to make yourself shock-proof. Do not be impressed by evil and do not be impressed by good.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The task of the writer is to serve humanity and not party politicians and their temporary fixations. But it's a hard path to follow. I'm having headaches over it because I'm too intensely aware of the pressures and issues and yet at the same time wish to retain my right to think for myself.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She was hardly conscious of her agonised cry as his hard kisses ravaged her mouth. For her it was like a dissolution of body and bones; with only a heart left; a pulsing heart awash in an ocean of rushing tornadic darkness; helpless at its own forward rushing...”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is not in bits and pieces. It is a magnificent, rhythmic, pulsating symphony.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is a treacherous quicksand with no guarantee of safety anywhere. We can only try to grab what happiness we can before we are swept off into oblivion.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not now, not ever, shall I be complete; and though the road to find you has been desolate with loneliness, still more desolate is the road that leads away from you. It is as though pain piles on pain in an endless, unbroken stream, until it is the only reality. What do they do, those who love?”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only reason why I always admit pain is that it seems the only constructive emotion.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A basically timid and cowardly person dare not presume to speak for others. He can only speak for himself. [A Personal View of the Survival of the Unfittest,”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There were once highway robbers, who said: 'Your money or your life!' Today, they say: 'Your politics or your life!' [A Personal View of the Survival of the Unfittest,”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who am I? What am I? In past and present, the answer lies in Africa; in part it lies within the whole timeless, limitless, eternal universe. How can I discover the meaning and purpose of my country if I do not first discover the meaning and purpose of my own life? Today there are a thousand labels. One of them is 'crazy crank'. I do not mind being a 'crazy crank', as long as I am sure that I am a crank of my own making, as long as I resist environmental, societal, and political attempts to control and suppress my mind. [A Personal View of the Survival of the Unfittest,”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All life flows continuously like water in the stream and I am only some of the water in the stream, never able to gauge my depth. The hours, the years, the eternities slip by too quickly, moving, changing, never the same thing. I move with this current to the ocean only to be flung back again to the stream. The cycle seems unending, repetitive. [Where is the Hour of the Beautiful Dancing of Birds in the Sun-wind?,”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The holy order of doing the right thing is incompatible with love, which does all the wrong things. Love can never learn to choose the woman who has the highest price, or whose father possesses the greatest number of cattle. Love strikes the outcast, the beggar, the stranger, and leaves the dull, dead, complacent conformer to his safety. [Where is the Hour of the Beautiful Dancing of Birds in the Sun-wind?,”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The body is a positive thing, and love without a body is negative, useless, purposeless. [Where is the Hour of the Beautiful Dancing of Birds in the Sun-wind?,”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A woman is a maker of pottery, feeling life with her hands, keeping it whole, moulding it from the depths upwards. Her vision is constant, unchanging. [Where is the Hour of the Beautiful Dancing of Birds in the Sun-wind?,”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“MakhayaMaseko’s quest is to find inner peace of mind by a constructive engagement with the social world and in the world of GolemaMmidi, these desires are offered fulfilment”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s Zulu … I am a Zulu. And he laughed sarcastically at the thought of calling himself a Zulu”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“the poverty and tribalism of Africa [are] a blessing if people [can] develop, sharing everythingwith each other”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“…the Tswana language [like] the bush, [belongs] to all Batswana people”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Head’s contention is that socially ascribed identities arefalse, misleading and degrading to the true inner person”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“they cannot exist unless they can live in the village insuch a way that the changes that they bring about are necessary … in determining who they are”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“it would seem to suggest that Africanness is not a natural state of existence, [but that] it must be performed”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Prostitutes, he was to decide, were the best type of women you'd find among all black women, unless a man wanted to be trapped for life by a dead thing. A prostitute laughed. She established her own kind of equality with men. She picked up a wide, vicarious experience that made her charter in a lively way, and she was so used to the sex organs of men that she was inclined to regard him as a bit more than a sex organ. Not so the dead thing most men married. Someone told that dead thing that a man was only his sex organs and functioned as such. Someone told her that she was inferior in every way to a man, and she had been inferior for so long that even if a door opened somewhere, she could not wear this freedom gracefully. There was no balance between herself and a man. There was nothing but this quiet, contemptuous, know-all silence between herself, the man and his functioning organs. And everyone called this married life, even the filthy unwashed children, the filthy unwashed floors, and piles of unwashed dishes.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes a man's God was like Solomon and he decked himself up in gold and he built a house that was a hundred cubits in length and fifty cubits in breadth and thirty cubits in height. Gold candlesticks, cherubims, and pomegranates adorned his house, which had forty bathrooms. And there are bowls and snuffers and spoons and censers and door hinges of pure gold. And all that the followers of Solomon could do was to gape and marvel and chronicle these wonders in minute detail. Even Solomon's wisdom took secondary place to his material possessions and dazzling raiment. Then came a God who was greater than Solomon, but he walked around with no shoes, in rough cloth, wandering up and down the dusty footpath in the hot sun, with no bed on which to rest his head. And all that the followers of this God could do was to chronicle, in minute detail, the wonder and marvel of his wisdom.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scarcely a breath of wind disturbed the stillness of the day, and the long rows of cabbages were bright green in the sunlight. Large white clouds drifted slowly across the deep blue sky. Now and then they obscured the sun and caused a chill on the backs of the prisoners who had to work all day long in the cabbage field.This trick the clouds were playing with the sun eventually caused one of the prisoners who wore glasses to stop work, straighten up and peer shortsightedly at them. He was a thin little fellow with a hollowed-out chest and comic knobbly knees. He also had a lot of fanciful ideas because he smiled at the clouds.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source