Top 60 Ishmael Beah Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We must strive to be like the moon.”

— Ishmael Beah

2. “My squad is my family, my gun is my provider, and protector, and my rule is to kill or be killed.”

— Ishmael Beah

3. “We all find joy and radiance and a reason to move on even in the most dire of circumstances. Even in chaos and madness, theres still a beauty that comes from just the vibrancy of another human spirit.”

— Ishmael Beah

4. “Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them.”

— Ishmael Beah

5. “In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy and confusion.”

— Ishmael Beah

6. “My teeth became sour as I listened to his story. It was then that I understood why he was quiet all the time.”

— Ishmael Beah

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7. “There’s a saying in the oral tradition of storytelling that when you tell a story, when you give out a story, it is no longer yours; it belongs to everyone who encounters it and everyone who takes it in.”

— Ishmael Beah

8. “I am always quiet so that I know what to say when I must speak.”

— Ishmael Beah

9. “We must live in the radiance of tomorrow, as our ancestors have suggested in their tales. For what is yet to come tomorrow has possibilities, and we must think of it, the simplest glimpse of that possibility of goodness. That will be our strength. That has always been our strength.”

— Ishmael Beah

10. “Every time people come at us with the intention of killing us, I close my eyes and wait for death. Even thought I am still alive, I feel like each time I accept death, part of me dies. Very soon I will completely die and all that will be left is my empty body walking with you. It will be quieter than I am.”

— Ishmael Beah

11. “Circumstances will change and things will be fine, just hold on a little more.”

— Ishmael Beah

12. “I knew I could never forget my past, but I wanted to stop talking about it so that I would be fully present in my new life.”

— Ishmael Beah

13. “When I was a child, my grandmother told me that the sky speaks to those who look and listen to it. She said, “In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy, and confusion.” That night I wanted the sky to talk to me.”

— Ishmael Beah

14. “I feel like each time I accept death, part of me dies.”

— Ishmael Beah

15. “Sometimes I closed my eyes hard to avoid thinking, but the eye of the mind refused to be closed and continued to plague me with images.”

— Ishmael Beah

16. “My childhood had gone by without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen.”

— Ishmael Beah

17. “I wanted to see my family, even if it meant dying with them.”

— Ishmael Beah

18. “My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule was to kill or be killed. The extent of my thoughts didn’t go much beyond that. We had been fighting for over two years, and killing had become a daily activity. I felt no pity for anyone.”

— Ishmael Beah

19. “I get a chance to observe the moon now, I still see those same images I saw when I was six, and it pleases me to know that that part of my childhood is still embedded in me.”

— Ishmael Beah

20. “This is one of the consequences of the civil war. People stop trusting each other, and every stranger becomes an enemy.”

— Ishmael Beah

21. “I was still hesitant to let myself let go, because I still believed in the fragility of happiness.”

— Ishmael Beah

22. “It was not easy being a soldier, but we just had to do it. I have been rehabilitated now, so don’t be afraid of me. I am not a soldier anymore; I am a child.”

— Ishmael Beah

23. “I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I’ve come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end...”

— Ishmael Beah

24. “We danced and laughed into the morning. But gradually we stopped. It was as if we all knew that we could be happy for only a brief moment.”

— Ishmael Beah

25. “We had not only lost our childhood in the war but our lives had been tainted by the same experiences that still caused us great pain and sadness.”

— Ishmael Beah

26. “Children played guessing games, telling each other whether the gun fired was and AK-47, a G3, an RPG, or a machine gun.”

— Ishmael Beah

27. “I lay in my bed night after night staring at the ceiling and thinking, Why have I survived the war? Why was I the last person in my immediate family to be alive? I didn’t know.”

— Ishmael Beah

28. “We can be rehabilitated,” I would emphasize, and point to myself as an example. I would always tell people that I believe children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance.”

— Ishmael Beah

29. “For those who have no voice, silence remains the unbroken truth. And every so often, that silence is torn by a roaring.- Mende Proverb, Sierra Leone.”

— Ishmael Beah

30. “When I was young, my father used to say, ‘If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.’ I thought about these words during my journey, and they kept me moving even when I didn’t know where I was going. Those words became the vehicle that drove my spirit forward and made it stay alive.”

— Ishmael Beah

31. “Even in the middle of the madness there remained that true and natural beauty, and it took my mind away from my current situation as I marveled at this sight.”

— Ishmael Beah

32. “In early 1993, when I was 12, I was separated from my family as the Sierra Leone civil war, which began two years earlier, came into my life.”

— Ishmael Beah

33. “I didn’t know what to do in my happy state. I was still hesitant to let myself let go, because I still believed in the fragility of happiness.”

— Ishmael Beah

34. “The day seemed oddly normal. The sun peacefully sailed through the white clouds, birds sang from treetops, the trees danced to the quiet wind.”

— Ishmael Beah

35. “I put my hands behind my head and lay on my back, trying to hold on to the memories of my family. Their faces seemed to be far off somewhere in my mind, and to get to them I had to bring up painful memories.”

— Ishmael Beah

36. “If you’re alive, then there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.”

— Ishmael Beah

37. “I was sad to leave, but I was also pleased to have met people outside of Sierra Leone. Because if I was to get killed upon my return, I knew that a memory of my existence was alive somewhere in the world.”

— Ishmael Beah

38. “I was glad to see other faces and at the same time disappointed that the war had destroyed the enjoyment of the very experience of meeting people.”

— Ishmael Beah

39. “How many more times do we have to come to terms with death before we find safety?”

— Ishmael Beah

40. “We all knew that we could grieve only for a short while in order to continue staying alive.”

— Ishmael Beah

41. “One man carried his dead son. He thought the boy was still alive. The father was covered with his son’s blood, and as he ran he kept saying, “I will get you to the hospital, my boy, everything will be fine.” Perhaps it was necessary that he cling to false hopes, since they kept him running from harm.”

— Ishmael Beah

42. “My conception of New York City came from rap music. I envisioned it as a place where people shot each other on the street and got away with it; no one walked on the streets, rather people drove in their sports cars looking for nightclubs and for violence.”

— Ishmael Beah

43. “I believe that there is a God, and coming from an African tradition, I believe also that there are gods.”

— Ishmael Beah

44. “I only liked talking to her because I felt that she didn’t judge me for what I had been a part of; she looked at me with the same inviting eyes and welcoming smile that said I was a child.”

— Ishmael Beah

45. “Most of the staff members were like that; they returned smiling after we hurt them. It was as if they had made a pact not to give up on us.”

— Ishmael Beah

46. “I will not be alive to see the end of this war. So, to save a place in your memories for other things, I won’t tell you my name. If you survive this war, just remember me as the old man you met. You boys should be on your way.”

— Ishmael Beah

47. “Whenever I speak at the United Nations, UNICEF or elsewhere to raise awareness of the continual and rampant recruitment of children in wars around the world, I come to realize that I still do not fully understand how I could have possibly survived the civil war in my country, Sierra Leone.”

— Ishmael Beah

48. “Bahkan di dalam kegilaan pun masih ada keindahan yang sejati dan alami.”

— Ishmael Beah

49. “The places I come from have such rich languages, such a variety of expression. In Sierra Leone we have about fifteen languages and three dialects. I grew up speaking about seven of them.”

— Ishmael Beah

50. “It isn’t about knowing the most stories, child. It is about carrying the ones that are most important and passing them along.”

— Ishmael Beah

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