Tayeb Salih Quotes

Everyone who is educated today wants to sit at a comfortable desk under a fan and live in an air-conditioned house surrounded by a garden, coming and going in an American car as wide as the street. If we do not tear out this disease by the roots we shall have with us a bourgeoisie that is in no way connected with the reality of our life...

~ Tayeb Salih

The blood of the setting sun suddenly spilled out on the western horizon like that of millions of people who have died in some violent war that has broken out between Earth and Heaven. Suddenly the war ended in defeat and all-embracing darkness descended and pervaded all four corners of the globe, wiping out the sadness and shyness that was in her eyes.

~ Tayeb Salih

You are entitled to wonder and to doubt - you're free.

~ Tayeb Salih

Wad Rayyes, you're a man who talks. rubbish. Your whole brain's in the head of your penis and the head of your penis is as small as your brain.

~ Tayeb Salih

I heard Mansour say to Richard, ‘You transmitted to us the disease of your capitalist economy. What did you give us except for a handful of capitalist companies that drew off our blood — and still do?’ Richard said to him, ‘All this shows that you cannot manage to live without us. You used to complain about colonialism and when we left you created the legend of neo-colonialism. It seems that our presence, in an open or undercover form, is as indispensable to you as air and water.’ They were not angry: they said such things to each other as they laughed, a stone’s throw from the Equator, with a bottomless historical chasm separating the two of them.

~ Tayeb Salih

The day here is a something without value, a mere torment suffered by living creatures as they await the night. Night is deliverance.

~ Tayeb Salih

As best I could I had answered their many questions. They were surprised when I told them that Europeans were, with minor differences, exactly like them, marrying and bringing up their children in accordance with principles and traditions, that they had good morals and were in general good people.Are there any farmers among them? Mahjoub asked me.Yes, there are some farmers among them. They’ve got everything—workers and doctors and farmers and teachers, just like us. I preferred not to say the rest that had come to my mind: that just like us they are born and die, and in the journey from the  cradle to the grave they dream dreams some of which come true and some of which are frustrated; that they fear the unknown, search for love and seek contentment in wife and child; that some are strong and some are weak; that some have been given more than they deserve by life, while others have been deprived by it, but that the differences are narrowing and most of the weak are no longer weak. I did not say this to Mahjoub, though I wish I had done so, for he was intelligent; in my conceit I was afraid he would not understand.

~ Tayeb Salih

We teach people in order to open up their minds and release their captive powers. But we cannot predict the result. Freedom - we free their minds from superstition. We give the people the keys of the future to act therein as they wish.

~ Tayeb Salih

I entered the water as naked as when my mother bore me. When I first touched the cold water I felt a shudder go through me, then the shudder was transformed into a sensation of wakefulness.

~ Tayeb Salih