Aminatta Forna Quotes & Sayings

“What ultimately happened is that my country had a war. I think it would be extraordinary, as a writer, not to want to write about that.”

“I don't have very many little fetishes, but the one I do have is that I like a particular mug to drink out of. It's just a small china cup, and I get very upset if my husband moves it.”

“No one ever sits you down at age eight and says, 'Aminatta, this is what's happened so far.' You have to work it out for yourself, and by the time you do, it's ancient history to many of the players. We're trying to make sense of the past, so we start to excavate our memories.”

“I was brought up in a household where you stood up to be counted.”

“Everyone thinks I have a coffee plantation in Sierra Leone, but I have a cashew crop project. I wrote about a woman who owns a coffee plantation! When you are talking about a woman writer coming from a hot country, there's a complete assumption that she is writing about her own life.”

“Increasingly, there are those of us who write from outside the center, and those are the writers that I'm most interested in because they bring me into worlds that I did not previously know. And that, as a writer, is what I try to create.”

“My childhood ended in this horrible way. I lived in a country where I didn't trust anybody.”

“My family's a ruling family.”

“Jung Chang was the first person to tell a grand historical, political story through a personal narrative.”

“Most writers I know go for word counts, and I used to be a journalist, so I guess that's ingrained.”