Alexandra Fuller Quotes
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In the West, it was believed that attitude and ambition saved you. In Africa, we had learned that no one was immune to capricious tragedy.
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I think there's a big difference between loving someone out of duty and dependency and loving someone because you really are able to sort of grow and be whole in the context of that relationship.
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In retrospect, I have come to recognise just how astounding my mother was during our childhood. She kept a woodwork shop and made beautiful furniture, as well as raising the pair of us in a society dominated by men. There really is nothing like war to reveal the power of patriarchy, but she always retained her independence.
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There's a point at which writing a book, or a long article, begins to feel like mental labor, and it's too painful to connect in the world in any real way mid-process. The only way to survive is to write until it is all said and done.
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The only process that comes close to the process of writing a whole book, in my experience, is childbirth. There is this moment when you think you can't possibly labour for another moment, and that, paradoxically, is when you have to push hardest.
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Being a white southern African who saw the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, the sense of being an outsider was absolutely instilled in my limbic system.
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Marriage is the trickiest and most basic contract that we have.
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For a memoir to really succeed, the author has to do such hard work before they come to the page. They have to do a brutal self-examination of everything they believe to be true.
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The belief that we can be done with our past is a myth.
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I remember Karoi as a very hot, flat place, but in reality, it is all hills. We just lived next to an airstrip - the only flat piece of land around. That was my world as a three-year-old and sums up the indelible power of memory to a young child.
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One of the things about being raised British in Africa is that you get this double whammy of toughness. The continent in place itself made you quite tough. And then you've got this British mother whose entire being rejects 'coddling' in case it makes you too soft. So there's absolutely nothing standing between you and a fairly rough experience.
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I did try to write fiction. I wrote 10 novels. And they were all just awful.
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It seems very clear to me that we, in the West, cannot afford to continue assuming propriety over the world's resources in a careless, greedy way without paying for it - not only with the lives of our loved ones, but also with our souls.
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Being a writer but also having been raised the way I was, I tend to turn to books for answers.
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Mostly, I would like people to ask other writers about the craft of their writing so we could learn from one another. We ask movie directors why they chose to use certain lights and angles and speeds of film, but most of the time, we ignore the craft of a writer.
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For me, writing is really an agony. I feel as if I have a huge, luminous idea that has the potential to be really profound, and then when I set it down on paper, I find the power of the idea has been hugely weakened in the process of transmission.
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I'm a working writer; this is my job. So it matters to me that it's good. I sweat over every word. I don't just vomit this stuff up. It's agony. The only thing that comes close is childbirth, except it's like being in labor for eighteen months.
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You can have an intense connection to someone without being a good, lifelong mate for him. Love is complicated and difficult that way.
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In general, I almost always watch foreign films.
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In ways I don't entirely have the words for, an experience, thought or a lesson isn't real for me until I've written down.
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I love my mother so much, because I see the whole of her.
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Everyone says marriage is hard work, but they don't tell you that actually being yourself and respecting yourself is hard work.
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There is no way to order chaos. It's the fundamental theory at the beginning and end of everything; it's the ultimate law of nature. There's no way to win against unpredictability, to suit up completely against accidents.
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It is the perpetual tragedy of all families: each of us believe our congenital pathologies and singular pains end with us.