Theory of Flight Quotes
PROLOGUE
- “her heart calcified into the most precious and beautiful something the onlookers had ever
seen” (page 9)
- “truly amazing phenomenon” (page 9)
- 3 September 1978 (Beauford Farm and Estate)
BOOK ONE
Part I: Genealogy
Genesis:
- “Genie’s beginning was like all our beginnings – beautiful and golden” (page 15)
- “had he not had the misfortune of being born in the wrong century” (Baines Tikiti, page 16)
- “one country that touched two oceans” (South Africa, page 19)
- “Baines’ eyes sparkled with a brilliance and his voice was weighted by an excitement that
was contagious” (Baines about aeroplanes, page 19)
- “He loved the boy but knew that they could not share in the same life” (Baines about Golide,
page 20)
- “Character was something that you sowed, nurtured, grew, cultivated and then reaped. It
spoke to an inner strength. It made a life into one that was lived with purpose” (page 21)
- “just in being he held a promise and people were happy to follow him” (Golide, page 21)
- “people would need to know that they were capable of flight” (page 22)
- “he felt that they had already been on a journey together through the ins and outs and highs
and lows of love – that they had always already shared a life with a past, present and future”
(Elizabeth and Golide, page 23)
- “a man capable of impossible things” (Golide, page 24)
- “formidable grace”, “majestic” (The elephants, page 25)
- “He became aware of his place in the world. He understood that in the grander scheme of
things he was but a speck … a tiny speck … and that was enough. There was freedom, beauty
even, in that kind of knowledge. It was the kind of knowledge that finally quieted you. It was
the kind of knowledge that allowed you to fly” (Golide, page 25)
Part II: History
Beauford:
- “no clear lines between cause and effect” (About war, page 29)
- “Beatrice questioned and challenged everything and everyone, whereas Kuki never had an
independent thought” (page 31)
- “angry child”, “no alternative emotion for him to feel” (Mordechai Gatiro, page 34)
- “her beauty afforded her a certain kind of ease, a certain kind of power”, “she stopped
trying to be anything more than what people saw” (Thandi Hadebe, page 36)
- “The city – the place where she could start a new, unblemished, unbesmirched chapter of
her life” (Thandi, page 39)
, Marcus & Genie:
- “a country’s independence is infectious and tends to permeate everything” (page 44)
- “Marcus was a cautious but not particularly morbid child” (page 45)
- “He saw that they were beautiful, but were it not for Genie he would not have seen that
theirs was a beauty worth cherishing” (Marcus, page 47)
- “golden egg” (Where Genie came from, page 49)
- “soothing voices, generous laughter and genuine happiness” (Marcus about Genie and
Elizabeth, page 49)
- “Worlds and possibilities unfurled before them, creating dizzying delights” (page 51)
- “that things that perish will rise again, that after every ending there is another beginning”
(Death, page 52)
- “speed and ferocity of a mother elephant that knows its calf is in danger” (Elizabeth, page
54)
- “liberation war hero”, “The presence of life after the death and devastation of war was
definitely something worth celebrating” (Golide, page 55)
- “surprising force”, “he felt that he was in danger and that something horrible was
happening”, “trapped by his mother’s arms” (Marcus, page 57 & 58)
- “It was a smile meant to give him courage”, “He wanted someone to save him” (Marcus
about Genie, page 59)
- “their beauty was not to be trusted. It was a dangerous beauty” (Marcus about his new
family, page 60)
Bhekithemba:
- “A son of the soil, in a real, literal sense. He was something that had germinated and
sprouted – broken through the earth – from this very spot. His eyes stung. His throat
choked. His lungs filled with something heavy and bitter. People ran, helter-skelter, seeking
safe spaces. Chaos. Confusion. Panic. Uncertainty. Fear. All around him. And yet here he
stood unmoved. Rooted. Connected. Certain. The tear gas would clear, and when it did he
would still be in this moment in history” (page 61)
- “something nascent, a beautiful beginning. For the first time he became fully aware of the
throng around him and of its elation and euphoria at finally being independent and free”
(page 64)
- “For the first time Bhekithemba felt part of something larger than himself” (page 64)
- “Bhekithemba would know that this power was called charisma” (Bob Marley, page 65)
- “He was a nationalist. He was a patriot. He was a revolutionary.”, “And now he wrote about
his country with equal pride and passion” (page 66)
- “it embarrassed him to admit he has been so colonized (page 66)
- “It was only natural to love the things that had given you life, a sense of place, a feeling of
belonging, a connection to things beyond yourself. You could not exist without these things
and so of course you loved them. It was a selfish love: a love of self-preservation” (page 70)
- “invention”, “a yearning that could never be fulfilled, something that would make one’s life
a quest rather than a series of unrelated, mostly boring events” (page 70 & 71)
- “The power to move, inspire and unite people. Charisma” (page 73)
- “If people saw him build a giant pair of silver wings, then they too would believe that they
could fly” (page 73)
