Ferdinand Oyono Quotes

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...

It is not the wolf that cries, but the goat.

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.

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.

The elephant does not rot in a secret place.

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

"Son of a dog," he said to me, "where is your master?"

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.

The Commandant trod on my fingers as he went out. I did not cry out. He did not turn round.

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

He had not remembered me. How might he remember me? All Africans appear to be identical to them. ”

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.

With that he shot out a kick to my shins that sent me sprawling under the table. The Commandant's kick was even more painful than the kick of the late father Gilbert. He seemed pleased with his effort.

My master is thickset. His legs have great muscles like the legs of a pedlar. He is the kind of man we call 'mahogany-trunk' because the trunk of the mahogany tree is so strong that it never bends in a storm. I am not a storm. I am the thing that obeys.

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