Quotes: Exile
5 quotes on this theme, each with its source and insight
The quotes
“Everyone starts at the beginning of the road, and the world is in an endless state of childhood.”
Source: Season of Migration to the North, p. 88 (Heinemann, 1991) · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- Verified as a line from Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North, spoken by the unnamed narrator and cited in the Heinemann English edition (1991).
- What remains uncertain
- Page numbers differ across English editions; the line is a narrator's utterance in the novel rather than a standalone authorial maxim.
In Season of Migration to the North the line captures a central ambivalence: travel opens learning and possibility, yet humanity remains unfinished—childlike, prone to repetition and misjudgment. It is spoken by the novel's unnamed narrator and carries the book's ironic tension about wanderlust.
“I have tried my best to keep my country alive by writing about it.”
Source: Interview with Jeffrey Brown, PBS NewsHour, February 27, 2007 · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The sentence is spoken by Nuruddin Farah in the PBS NewsHour interview conducted by Jeffrey Brown on February 27, 2007.
- What remains uncertain
- Farah refers to an earlier phrasing of the same mission from his youth; the original appearance of that earlier wording is not established by available evidence.
Farah frames writing as cultural preservation: a way to keep a nation's memory alive when institutions and public narratives collapse. He expressed this in a televised interview, saying his mission was to keep his country alive by writing about it. The line is attested in the 2007 PBS interview.
“The place we run toward runs toward us!”
Source: Birds of Caution, 1996 (later editions noted, e.g. 2012) · Check the source
Disputed attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The wording is attributed online to Ibrahim Nasrallah and associated with Birds of Caution, but the evidence comes from reader-submitted quotation pages rather than a verified printed passage.
- What remains uncertain
- No page number, edition or primary-text citation has been located; the quotation is plausibly Nasrallah’s but not independently verified.
The line makes place active: the homeland seems to move toward the person who seeks it. Read against Nasrallah’s Birds of Caution, it reads less like a self-help axiom and more like a poetic claim about memory, exile and the pull of belonging. The syntax turns longing into a lived paradox.
“I’m nothing, I’m everything,’ he declared. ‘The street is my mother. The sun is my father. What more should I ask of life?”
Source: Black Moses (Petit Piment), novel, 2015 · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The passage appears in the novel Black Moses (Petit Piment) by Alain Mabanckou; the attribution to him is verified.
- What remains uncertain
- Some online records misassigned the line to The Lights of Pointe‑Noire; no stable page image or pagination for the novel’s edition is provided by the research.
The line packs a paradox: claiming both utter insignificance and total belonging. In Black Moses a character substitutes the street and the sun for family, turning exile and poverty into a fierce, elemental identity. The line comes from Mabanckou’s 2015 novel and voices survival and dignity.
“Life was a journey of discovery, and character was a variable that kept veering left and right in search of the perfect way for a particular day.”
Source: Abyssinian Chronicles, English trans. Knopf, 2000 · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The line appears in Abyssinian Chronicles as part of the narrator Mugezi’s reflection.
- What remains uncertain
- Attribution to Isegawa is verified at the work level; the sentence functions as a narrated observation within the novel.
Isegawa frames identity as an ongoing, unstable process: character isn’t fixed but shifts in response to daily pressures. In Abyssinian Chronicles the line, voiced by the narrator, captures how history, family and migration push a person off-course and force constant reorientation.