It’s exhausting writing nonfiction, particularly when it’s personal. It’s tiring, always speaking about things that are not necessarily fun retelling. Ishmael Beah Read Quote
My mother tongue, Mende, is very expressive, very figurative, and when I write, I always struggle to find the English equivalent of things that I really want to say in Mende. For example, in Mende, you wouldn’t say ‘night came suddenly’; you would say ‘the sky rolled over and changed its sides.’ Ishmael Beah Read Quote
The thing that really gets to me is that countries are in the news only when things get out of hand. That’s when it’s newsworthy. When the war ends, it’s not newsworthy anymore; no one wants to think about it. Actually, the aftermath is the most important part. It’s when people have to rebuild. Ishmael Beah Read Quote
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. Ishmael Beah Read Quote
I grew up in Sierra Leone, in a small village where as a boy my imagination was sparked by the oral tradition of storytelling. At a very young age I learned the importance of telling stories – I saw that stories are the most potent way of seeing anything we encounter in our lives, and how we can deal with living. Ishmael Beah Read Quote
In early 1993, when I was 12, I was separated from my family as the Sierra Leone civil war, which began two years earlier, came into my life. Ishmael Beah Read Quote
I believe that there is a God, and coming from an African tradition, I believe also that there are gods. Ishmael Beah Read Quote
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. Ishmael Beah Read Quote
I grew up as a Muslim. I went to an Islamic elementary school. Most of my community was Muslim, so I grew up praying five times a day. Ishmael Beah Read Quote
