So long a letter

So long a story is a novel originally written in French by the Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ. The novel captures a love story between two females, a friendship that is a strength through the years, that remains constant even as other relationships flourish and fade.

Quotes

• Friendship has splendors that love knows not. It grows stronger when crossed, whereas obstacles kill love. Friendship resists time, which wearies and severs couples. It has heights unknown to love.
  • Speaking about friendship

• The flavour of life is love. The salt of life is also love.
  • Speaking on love has the flavour of life

• The word 'happiness' does indeed have meaning, doesn't it? I shall go out in search of it.
  • Speaking on happiness

• A nervous breakdown waits around the corner for anyone who lets himself wallow in bitterness. Little by little, it takes over your whole being.
  • Speaking on bitterness

• I am stripping myself of your love, of your name. Clothed in my dignity, the only worthy garment, I go my way.
  • [1]

• Books saved you. Having become your refuge, they sustained you. The power of books, this marvelous invention of astute human intelligence. Various signs associated with sound: different sounds that form the word. Juxtaposition of words from which springs the idea, Thought, History, Science, Life. Sole instrument of interrelationships and of culture, unparalleled means of giving and receiving. Books knit generations together in the same continuing effort that leads to progress. They enabled you to better yourself. What society refused you, they granted
  • Speaking on power of books

• Each life has its share of heroism, an obscure heroism, born of abdication, of renunciation and acceptance under the merciless whip of fate.
  • Speaking on life

• Clothed in my dignity, the only worthy garment, I go my way.
  • [2]

• The most humble of huts is pleasing when it is clean; the most luxurious setting offers no attraction if it is covered in dust.
  • [3]

• One does not fix appointments with fate. Fate grasps whom it wants, when it wants.
  • Page1.

• Again, I think: heart massage, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, ridiculous weapons against the divine will.
  • Page 2.

• Standing upright, her eyes meeting my disapproving look, she mutters between teeth reddened by cola nuts: 'Lady, death is just as beautiful as life has been' [
  • Page 8

• Each profession, intellectual or manual, deserves consideration, whether it requires painful physical or manual dexterity, wide knowledge or the patience of an ant. Ours, like that of the doctor, does not allow for any mistake. You don't joke with life, and life is both body and mind. To warp a soul is as much a sacrilege as murder.
  • Pages 23/24

• You don't burn the tree which bears the fruit.

**Page 32.

• The play of destiny remains impenetrable. The cowries that a female neighbour throws on a fan in front of me do not fill me with optimism, neither when they remain face upwards, showing the black hollow that signifies laughter, nor when the grouping of their whites seem to say that 'the man in the double trousers' is coming towards me.
  • Page 42.

• A woman is like a ball; once a ball is thrown, no one can predict where it will bounce. You have no control over where it rolls, and even less over who gets it. Often it is grabbed by an unexpected hand ...
  • Page 42.

• Whereas a woman draws from the passing years the force of her devotion, despite the ageing of her companion, a man, on the other hand, restricts his field of tenderness. His egoistic eye looks over his partner's shoulder. He compares what he had with what he no long has, what he has with what he could have.
  • Page 42.

• To overcome distress when it sits upon you demands strong will. When one thinks that with each passing second one's life is shortened, one must profit intensely from this second; it is the sum of all the lost or harvested seconds that makes for a wasted or a successful life. Brace oneself to check despair and get it into proportion! A nervous breakdown waits around the corner for anyone who lets himself wallow in distress. Little by little, it takes over your whole being.

Page 43.

• Friendship has splendours that love knows not. It grows stronger when crossed, whereas obstacles kill love. Friendship resists time, which wearies and severs couples. It has heights unknown to love.
  • Page 56.

• Aggression and condescension in a woman arouse contempt and hatred for her husband. If she is gracious, even without appealing to any ideology, she can summon support for any action. In a word, a man's success depends on feminine support.
  • Page 59.

• You don't fell the tree whose shade protects you. You water it. You watch over it.
  • Page 69

• You can feed your stomach as well as you please; it will still provide for itself without your knowing. [
  • Page 81.

• One is a mother to lighten the darkness. One is a mother to shield when lightning streaks the night, when thunder shakes the earth, when mud bogs one down. One is a mother in order to love without beginning or end.
  • Page 87

• The success of the family is born of a couple's harmony, as the harmony of multiple instruments creates a pleasant symphony.
  • Page 94.