Quotes by Sierra Leonean Authors

The kind of legacy you leave will only reflect the kind of life you lived.
Andrena Sawyer
What the best novels and novelists do is to offer a different way of seeing.
Aminatta Forna
How differently we behave in other peoples countries ... no sooner than we think we can get away with it, we do as we please. It doesn't require the breakdown of a social order. It takes a six-hour plane flight.
Aminatta Forna
No one’s life ever goes as they planned. That truth alone should bring a sense of relief to everyone.
Andrena Sawyer
My squad is my family, my gun is my provider, and protector, and my rule is to kill or be killed.
Ishmael Beah
The sun's brightness painted our shadows on the ground.
Ishmael Beah
Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Try not to see it as an invitation to compete.
Andrena Sawyer
We must strive to be like the moon.' An old man in Kabati repeated this sentence often... the adage served to remind people to always be on their best behavior and to be good to others. [S]he said that people complain when there is too much sun and it gets unbearably hot, and also when it rains too much or when it is cold. But, no one grumbles when the moon shines. Everyone becomes happy and appreciates the moon in their own special way. Children watch their shadows and play in its light, people gather at the square to tell stories and dance through the night. A lot of happy things happen when the moon shines. These are some of the reasons why we should want to be like the moon.
Ishmael Beah
The only way that getting older can be a bad thing is if you are not fully living in the moment now.
Andrena Sawyer
Life is hard. Find some really good people to walk through it with. It makes things a little easier.
Andrena Sawyer
I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I've come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end...
Ishmael Beah
Whatever you do, be sure to do it well.
Andrena Sawyer
Regrets begin the moment we're comfortable with settling.
Andrena Sawyer
He knows nothing about how this will all end, except that it will surely end. He tries to imagine himself into a future, somewhere past this point, but he cannot. There is nothing to do but to keep on existing, in this exact time and place. This is what hell must be like. Waiting without knowing. Not hell, but purgatory. Worse than hell.
Aminatta Forna
God, unlike His creation, is always proactive and never reactive.
Andrena Sawyer
One of the most difficult lessons life has taught me is that if, despite my best efforts, something is not working out, it may be time to step back and assess what other opportunities are coming my way..
Andrena Sawyer
If it comes easy, it will go fast.
Andrena Sawyer
Children played guessing games, telling each other whether the gun fired was and AK-47, a G3, an RPG, or a machine gun.
Ishmael Beah
Do not despise little beginnings. It'll all make sense as you're staring at an opportunity that you realize the difficult moments merely prepared you for.
Andrena Sawyer
To my Black brothers and sisters, choose faith. As difficult as it is, choose faith—the kind of faith that we know without works is dead. The faith that raises awareness, educates the community, advocates, cares for the widows and feeds the orphans. Choose the faith that is compelled to action, but not controlled my anger.
Andrena Sawyer
Righteous indignation calls sin what it is. Bigotry is sin. Racism is sin. Oppression is sin. Control by fear is sin. Violence is sin. The quicker we can all admit that, the quicker the healing will begin.
Andrena Sawyer
The price of conviction has never been cheap, but it will always be worth it.
Andrena Sawyer
One of the unsettling things about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn’t sure when or where it was going to end. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. I felt that I was starting over and over again. I was always on the move, always going somewhere. While we walked, I sometimes lagged behind, thinking about these things. To survive each passing day was my goal in life. At villages where we managed to find some happiness by being treated to food or fresh water, I knew that it was temporary and that we were only passing through. So I couldn’t bring myself to be completely happy. It was much easier to be sad than to go back and forth between emotions, and this gave me the determination I needed to keep moving. I was never disappointed, since I always expected the worst to happen. There were nights when I couldn’t sleep but stared into the darkest night until my eyes could see clearly through it. I thought about where my family was and whether they were alive.
Ishmael Beah
If mistakes determine our worth, then we're all worthless.Thank God that's not the case.
Andrena Sawyer
Even if it's not appreciated, do your best. Integrity will take you further than acknowledgement.
Andrena Sawyer
A life, a history, whole patterns of existence altered, simply by doing nothing. The silent lie. The act of omission.
Aminatta Forna
I am always quiet so that I know what to say when I must speak.
Ishmael Beah
[T]hose most precious memories are hidden in the safest place of all. Safe from fire or floods or war. In stories. Stories remembered, until they are ready to be told. Or perhaps simply ready to be heard.
Aminatta Forna
Sometimes I closed my eyes hard to avoid thinking, but the eye of the mind refused to be closed and continued to plague me with images.
Ishmael Beah
We took a bowl each and started eating. He went back into the little room, and by the time he returned to the table with his own bowl of food to eat with us, we had already finished. He was shocked and looked around to see if we had done something else with the food.
Ishmael Beah
I was so happy that my mother, father, and two brothers had somehow found one another. Perhaps my mother and father have gotten back together, I thought.
Ishmael Beah
Who can ever know what path to walk on when all of them are either crooked or broken? One just has to walk.
Ishmael Beah
Our ultimate devotion is to be a reflection of a divine work that is continuously unfolding in our hearts.
Andrena Sawyer
Adrian's tone suggested that the desire for something was all it took. They all live with endless possibilities, leave their homes for the sake of something new. But the dream is woven from the fabric of freedom. For desire to exist it requires the element of possibility, and that for Kai has never existed, until now...
Aminatta Forna
War had the effect of encouraging people to try to stay alive. Poverty, too. Survival was simply too hard-won to be given up lightly.
Aminatta Forna
What God has for you, is for you. We can move forward with peace and confidence in that.
Andrena Sawyer
I was afraid to fall asleep, but staying awake also brought back painful memories. Memories I sometimes wish I could wash away, even though I am aware that they are an important part of what my life is; who I am now. I stayed up all night, anxiously waiting for daylight, so that I could fully return to my new life, to rediscover happiness I had known as a child, the joy that had stayed alive inside me even through times when being alive itself became a burden. These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past.
Ishmael Beah
The problem with social media is that it's great for your ego, but terrible for your sanity.
Andrena Sawyer
We are never short on opportunities to answer the call to assist the widows, support the homeless, stand up for justice and to preach Christ crucified and resurrected. That is the true calling of every believer.
Andrena Sawyer
The hollowness in his chest, the tense yearning, the loneliness he braces against, every morning until he can immerse himself in work and forget. Not love. Something else, something with a power that endures. Not love, but a memory of love.
Aminatta Forna
At the time he had closed in upon himself, denying her a place of entry. She was tenacious, aggressive as a lover, had tried to prise the pieces of him apart. Only when she failed had she finally let go, by then months had passed. She loved like she was going to war, but she was also not the kind of woman to wait for a man. Valiant in battle, noble in defeat. She walked away and never looked back
Aminatta Forna
How easily they spoke of love. And yet, when she'd needed the certainty of his feeling for her, he'd let her slip away, never able to bring himself to tell her about the ways in which he'd been changed. He'd been incapable he'd let Nenebah believe the problem lay with her.
Aminatta Forna
And afterwards, if you had asked any of the survivors how they had managed it, they would not have been able to tell you. It was as if those days in the forest, the escape to the city, had passed in a trance. The mind creates an alternative state.
Aminatta Forna
I was sad to leave, but I was also pleased to have met people outside of Sierra Leone. Because if I was to get killed upon my return, I knew that a memory of my existence was alive somewhere in the world.
Ishmael Beah
Yet what use against the deceit of a state are the memories of a child?
Aminatta Forna
My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule was to kill or be killed. The extent of my thoughts didn’t go much beyond that. We had been fighting for over two years, and killing had become a daily activity. I felt no pity for anyone.
Ishmael Beah
Some people tried to hurt us to protect themselves, their family and communities...This was one of the consequences of civil war. People stopped trusting each other, and every stranger became an enemy. Even people who knew you became extremely careful about how they related or spoke to you.
Ishmael Beah
The branches of the trees looked as if they were holding hands and bowing their heads in prayer.
Ishmael Beah
Lord, help us to choose humility over pride. Help us to choose love over our reputation. Help us to choose patience over making a point, and your Word over our feelings. Lord, help us to choose perseverance over the easy way out.
Andrena Sawyer
If you want to know a country, read its writers.
Aminatta Forna
As believers, our reaction to crisis reveals our heart toward God.
Andrena Sawyer
There are two types of limitations: those others place on us, and those we place on ourselves. One is more subtle. Both are equally dangerous.
Andrena Sawyer
It isn't about knowing the most stories, child. It is about carrying the ones that are most important and passing them along.
Ishmael Beah
Misery loves company. For the sake of your sanity, avoid entertaining her.
Andrena Sawyer
Seek first the kingdom of God and all other things will be added to you. Don't worry about the things. Seek Him first and watch Him work in you.
Andrena Sawyer
Courage is making an unpopular decision and suffering through temporary discomfort because you know it will have the best long-term results.
Andrena Sawyer
Live boldly now. Later may not be an option.
Andrena Sawyer
On our way back to her house, I didn’t look at the city lights any longer. I looked into the sky and felt as if the moon was following us.When I was a child, my grandmother told me that the sky speaks to those who look and listen to it. She said, “In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy, and confusion.” That night I wanted the sky to talk to me.
Ishmael Beah
I put my hands behind my head and lay on my back, trying to hold on to the memories of my family. Their faces seemed to be far off somewhere in my mind, and to get to them I had to bring up painful memories.
Ishmael Beah
I lay in my bed night after night staring at the ceiling and thinking, Why have I survived the war? Why was I the last person in my immediate family to be alive? I didn’t know.
Ishmael Beah