Memorable Quotes in Pede Hollist’s So the Path Does Not Die

1. “She slides her hand into her grandmother’s and skipped alongside to keep pace with the tall, sinewy woman who fed her ogi and thick slices of plantains fried in palm-oil when she was younger.” (Chapter 1)
2. “The jolts became more frequent and violent. Her anxiety deepened as the day darkened into night.” (Chapter 2)
3. “That evening, Chernor, his head bandaged, accompanied his father Ali to report the incident to Pa. Heddle. He was sitting in his favorite chair by his Grundig radio and record player, pained by indigestion from hastily eating a heaping plate of rice and cassava leaves and by his indignation at having to answer to a civil service boss he described as “an illiterate nincompoop.”  (Chapter 3)
4. “Fina was a beautiful Fulamusu the day she stepped foot on the CC campus. Hers was not the kind that stunned and made one stop, look, and go “wow”! Her beauty was courteous.” (Chapter 4).
5. “In fact, Meredith seemed timid, even uncomfortable, about being American, preferring, for instance, loose cotton dresses and head ties to jeans and other clothing that emphasized her difference from the locals. She spoke a near-perfect Krio that surprised everyone until she revealed that she had grown up in Freetown.” (Chapter 5)
6. “It had the element of shock the suitors must have felt at the moment Odysseus revealed his true identity; it had the irony Ezeulu and Umuaro must have realized to learn that Oduche, the son of the Chief Priest of Ulu, had imprisoned the sacred Royal Python; but it was the realization that she could not escape what had been ordained by the Ancestors and Baramusu that reverberated through her.” (Chapter 6)
7. “Kunte Kinte don’t need that juju mess. He got that big stick. He works magic with it and sistas go crazy!” (Chapter 7)
8. “And in what better country could two immigrants start a romance than in America, the land where people learn from birth that their dreams and hopes are not wild imaginings but the blueprints of their tomorrows?” (Chapter 8)
9. “Neither had family traditions, religious beliefs, ethnic or racial ideologies that restrained their headlong plunge into a full-fledged relationship.” (Chapter 9)
10. “Meanwhile, the costs associated with buying the furnishings for their house loomed large, real and daunting like a freshly washed baby to a first-time mother.” (Chapter 10)
11. “You have to leave some things behind because there’s something new and better ahead, me! I’ve got to let go of some things because I’ve got something better too, you!” He smiled.” (Chapter 11)
12. “MadDog had not earned his nickname because he was soft and cuddly. Once he got into a fight, he was not the type even Scraps could order to stop.” (Chapter 12)
13. “She, my wife. A man’s gotta right to git his wife, ain’t he? ’Fore she can marry somebody else, she gotta divorce me.” (Chapter 13)
14. “Jemal never finished his sentence, for Aman lunged at him, head first, knocking off her head tie in the process and sending a couple of the boys-from-back home tumbling to the ground.” (Chapter 14)
15. “I love Baramusu, but looking back, she took advantage of my youthful desire to belong, to not be the odd one out.” (Chapter 15)
16. “However, the plan left Kizzy feeling vulnerable, at the mercy of Fina and Cammy, the two people he’d least like to be beholden to.” (Chapter 16)
17. “Millions of people live every day with inconveniences. Are they any less happy? My life here is much more convenient than it could ever be back home, yet I don’t feel fulfilled. Something’s missing.” (Chapter 17)
18. “When Cammy walked in, Fina’s townhouse was as solemn as early morning communion in a Catholic church.” (Chapter 18)
19. “The day had been full of sharp angles and awkward turns. But he had learned long ago from Donovan’s death that the important thing was how one responded to changes rather than how loud one moaned about them.” (Chapter 19)
20. “A bird that does not leave its nest to find food for fear it might lose its way back home will surely starve to death.” (Chapter 20)
21. “It’s about belonging, knowing that I have a past to own,” Aman panned the entire room. “The very past which these two want to return to but which Cammy says does not exist. Even if I have no past to recover, at least I now know where it once existed.” (Chapter 21)
22. “Except for the one time when Fina said, “Take me home please,” after Cammy took a turn toward his house, they drove to her townhouse in silence, each burdened with a load from the past they knew must now be unloaded, but each wondering if the other had the strength and understanding to accept and share its weight, its pain.” (Chapter 22)
23. “It was a homecoming she needed to make, tethered as she was by the rope. This time, she walked through the front door of the house in which she grew up in Freetown; this time she stood erect in front of a stooping, graying man and woman and pressed a small envelope with cash into the woman’s hands.” (Chapter 23)

Further Reading:

• Themes in Pede Hollist’s So the Path Does Not Die
• Plot Summary and Setting of Pede Hollist’s So the Path Does Not Die
• Characters in Pede Hollist’s So the Path Does Not Die
• Chapter by Chapter Summary of Pede Hollist’s So the Path Does Not Die

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