I'm not pessimistic about Africa. The cities just seem big and hopeless. But there's still a great green heart where there's possibility. There's hope in the wilderness.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a sense of optimism about Africa despite its challenges, highlighting the potential for hope and possibility that exists in its wilderness.
Paul Theroux conveys a complex view of Africa, acknowledging the overwhelming feelings one might have when faced with large, urban environments that appear daunting and full of despair. However, he emphasizes that there is still a vibrant 'green heart' in the continent, symbolizing the untouched natural beauty and potential for growth, reminding us that hope can flourish in adversity, especially in its wild spaces.
In practice
During a speech about conservation efforts, one could use this quote to highlight the importance of protecting Africa's natural spaces.
Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home.
I can't predict how reading habits will change. But I will say that the greatest loss is the paper archive - no more a great stack of manuscripts, letters, and notebooks from a writer's life, but only a tiny pile of disks, little plastic cookies where once were calligraphic marvels.
When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.
Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.
The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown.
You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
No sign, so far, of anything sinister—but I live in hope.
Hope is in some respects a thing more brilliant, more vivifying, than fruition. What we have looked forward to with eager and earnest aspiration is never in all respects equal to the picture we had formed of it. The very uncertainty enhances the enjoyment.
The cross means there is no shipwreck without hope; there is no dark without dawn; nor storm without haven.
While there's life, there is hope.
I have hope for you, if only because you're the only one left to hope for.
Maybe we’ll live to see sharks recover. Right now, that seems as improbable as seeing all these falcons. Hope is the ability to see how things could be better. The world of human affairs has long been a shadowy place, but always backlit by the light of hope. Each person can add hope to the world. A resigned person subtracts hope. The more people strive, the more change becomes likely.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.