Mia Couto

Listen, and you will realize that we are not made from cells or from atoms. We are made from stories.

Whoever lived nailed to one floor cannot dream of other places.

Every morning the gazelle wakes up knowing she must run faster than the lion or will be dead. Every morning the lion wakes up knowing he must run faster than the gazelle or he'll starve. It doesn't matter if you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun rises you better start to run.

Life is too precious to waste in a disenchanted world.

Not living is what tires you the most.

Within each one is its darkness. And in that dark only lives who we invented there. It is we who fill the dark with our fears. 

Nostalgia is a tattoo on the soul: we only get rid of it by losing a piece of us.

It is not by holding wings that a bird is helped to fly. The bird flies simply because they let it be a bird.

In war the poor are killed. In peace, the poor die. 

I'm happy just for laziness. Unhappiness gives a worse hassle than disease: we have to get in and out of it, drive away those who want to comfort us, accept condolences for a portion of the soul that did not even die.