7 mind-blowing quotes from 'Tram 83' by Fiston Mwanza Mujila

1. “Innocence,” echoed Requiem, bursting into laughter. “You really mean innocence? Innocence is cowardice. You have to move with the times, brother.”

2. "Literature deserves pride of place in the shaping of history. It is by way of literature that I can reestablish the truth. I intend to piece together the memory of a country that exists only on paper. To fantasize about the City-State and the Back-Country with a view to exploring collective memory…"

3. "You write an epic poem about the hairstyle of the president’s wife, they give you a house; a monologue rehashing the dreams of the Minister of Divination, Clairvoyance, and Prophecies, they buy you a trip to Venice; a novel about the president’s childhood, they appoint you Minister of Agriculture and Bovine Farming."

4. "We need doctors, mechanics, carpenters, and garbage collectors, but certainly not dreamers."

5. “So whenever I write, it feels like my age is reduced by half, or even fifteen, seventeen, perhaps thirty-five years. It feels like I am returned to the belly of my mother and therefore have no one to answer to. I forget, in turn, my ragged clothes and my tuberculosis and my setbacks and my old pairs of shoes.”

6. "The tragedy is already written, we merely preface it."

7. “Your neighbor sells doughnuts, you also start selling doughnuts, and you even dabble with black magic to nab all his customers.”

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