André Alexis Quotes

The city had been built by people from innumerable elsewheres. It was a chaos of cultures ordered only by its long streets. It belonged to no one and never would, or maybe it was a million cities in one, unique to each of its inhabitants, belonging to whoever walked its streets.
André Alexis
It was not boring, said Majnoun, but it was strange. The people were always looking away to where you couldn't see. The whole time, I thought there was something coming. Then at the end, it was death that came.
André Alexis
The group of people in front of her was jovial and paid her no attention. The group behind was much the same. She was alone without being alone.
André Alexis
Death was in every fibre of these creatures. It was hidden in their languages and at the root of their civilizations. You could hear it in the sounds they made and see it in the way they moved. It darkened their pleasures and lightened their despair.
André Alexis
so little of what anything means comes through words.
André Alexis
Prince's words had not been meant as a warning. Rather, he had been playing. He had been pretending. He had been speaking for speaking's sake. Could there be a more despicable use for words?
André Alexis
Benjy's greatest wish was for a place where the echelon was clear to all, where the powerful cared for the weak and the weak gave their respect without being coerced. He longed for balance, order, right and pleasure.
André Alexis
He was a committed leader, capable of - or prone to - instinctive decisions. More: he could put aside thought in the service of forceful action. But in quiet moments his sensitivity sometimes led him to reconsider his own behaviour. In other words, Atticus had a conscience, and it was this that led him to what some would call faith.
André Alexis