Ferdinand Oyono Quotes

Fuck off out of here! Go on get out of my hut!

Before them, the statue of Holy person Subside, who had been so darkened by the climate that he could have gone for an African, was roosted dubiously on a sort of steeple at such an edge, that it looked as though in a little while he would come toppling down.

But for me, it is more than mourning. I have died my first death….

Oh, road, daughter of all our labour, lead me to the white man!

My happiness has neither day nor night. I didn't know about it, it just burst upon my whole being. I will sing to my flute, I will sing on the banks of rivers, but no words can express my happiness. I have held the hand of my queen. I felt that I was really alive. From now on my hand is sacred and must not know the lower regions of my body. My hand belongs to my queen whose hair is the colour of ebony, with eyes that are like the antelope's, whose skin is pink and white as ivory. A shudder ran through my body at the touch of her tiny moist hand, She trembled like a flower dancing in the breeze. My life was mingling with hers at the touch of her hand. Her smile is refreshing as a spring of water. Her look is as warm as a ray from the setting sun. It bathes you in a light that warms the depths of the heart. I am afraid... afraid of myself...

He let me go. Through the darkness I saw his white hands move in a gesture of disgust as if he had touched something unclean.

At the first alarm I was jostled, then knocked down and trampled on. I could feel the Greek's dog at my heel. I shall never know how I managed to get to my feet and to climb up to the top of the huge mango tree. There I took refuge. The Europeans were laughing and pointing up to the top of the tree where I was hiding. The Commandant was laughing as well. He had not recognized me. How could he recognize me? All Africans look the same to them.

I was alleviated by this discovery. It executed something within me … I realized I ought to never be startled of the Commandant again.

All these people who pretended they had come to grieve with Meka were just dogs.

Ah, these whites, she burst out. The dog can die of hunger beside his master's meat. They don't bury the goat up to the horns. They bury him altogether.

Cover up your dirty old arse and show me your papers!

Life, he says, is like the chameleon, changing colour all the time.

I shall be the Chief European's boy. The dog of a king is a king of dogs.

I thought I had married a man, a real man… instead I married an arse-full of shit. My Children, my poor children – sold like the Lord who was sold by Judas…

My future parents-in-law had asked me for a bundle of stock-fish so that I could marry their daughter according to civil rites. I have already given them thirty thousand francs, a case of beer, a pith-helmet, a sack of salt, three matchets, three sheep, a water-bucket, a cast-iron cooking pot, and a sack of rice. All that was left was the stock fish.