Ishmael Beah Quotes

…children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance.

A lot of people, when they say forgive and forget, they think you completely wash your brain out and forget everything. That is not the concept. What I think is you forgive and you forget so you can transform your experiences, not necessarily forget them but transform them, so that they dont haunt you or handicap you or kill you.

When I was young, my father used to say, ‘If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.’ I thought about these words during my journey, and they kept me moving even when I didn’t know where I was going. Those words became the vehicle that drove my spirit forward and made it stay alive.

How many more times do we have to come to terms with death before we find safety?

My squad is my family, my gun is my provider, and protector, and my rule is to kill or be killed.

The places I come from have such rich languages, such a variety of expression. In Sierra Leone we have about fifteen languages and three dialects. I grew up speaking about seven of them.

I believe in having a more open mind and including others who don’t share your faith and having dialogue with them. And just having a pure heart and being a good person can bring you closer to God. Because once you believe in one particular religion fully and not others, that requires you to start disliking people who don’t share your views.

My childhood had gone by without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen.

This days one must be careful to avoid awakening the pain of another.

As a kid in Africa, you were so connected to nature itself because you went farming, watched the moon out at night, observed how the sky was different, and how the birds chanted different songs in the evening and the morning.

I believe that there is a God, and coming from an African tradition, I believe also that there are gods.

In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy and confusion.