It was in 2022 when I first encountered Eloghosa Osunde on one of my not-so-random trips to the bookstore. Their debut novel, Vagabonds! immediately piqued my interest. I was, admittedly, reluctant at first but I eventually relented; my curiosity was too great to be quelled. The novel is essentially a collection of short stories thematically connected. Vagabonds! is a polyphonic novel populated by various characters who were, in their own way, going against social and gender conventions. The titular vagabonds are all queer, pushed into the darkness because of Nigeria’s religious corruption and highly homophobic legislation. It did take me some time to immerse myself into the story but once I was able to find my footing, I was riveted. Osunde’s language also flowed, making their book a well for memorable lines. I have rounded some of these memorable quotes in this quotable quote update. Without ado, here are some of the memorable lines from Vagabonds!

Do check out my complete review of Eloghosa Osunde’s debut novel by clicking here.

“He was scared we might see them and love them in full, that we would undivine him by withdrawing our love; that for them, we could gather and peel the beauty off his face. He needed to keep us veiled. But looking is how I realized I was on the losing side. What I struggled with then was how long it took me to see that people punish in others what they hate in themselves.

~ Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds! 

“People say fear the night, because that’s when bad things come out. It’s not necessarily true. Unmasked things come out at night. True things. But truth is a horror when you’re not done hiding. Whatever cannot come out during the day finds a way to show its head at night. People know this. That’s why the ones with extra eyes always pray at night. It’s a way of bolting the doors between this realm and the other, of sealing the entrance.”

~ Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds! 

“Money answers all things. And money is the root of all evil. Both things are true. Laws exist, yes, but laws are for the poor. Laws are for the masses. Laws are for those who answer only to the city. Laws are for those who don’t have master keys. Know this: for every law made, there are always people who are under it and people who are above it. At a certain point, the city no longer has absolute power, can no longer fight for you.”

~ Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds! 

“But everything still comes back to us. Whether we will receive that love or not depends on us; it depends on whether we think we deserve it or not. No one can decide that part for anyone else, d’you get? It has to be you. It has to be us.”

~ Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds! 

“We’re ghosts because we have to be because our lives depend on passing and being passed by. But we’re ghosts who see other ghosts often, who hold things and hug them and fuck them, too, in our bedrooms, doors closed. We love them too. Like you. Here, they call us mad. We go again. They strike us down. We choose again. They black off our lights. We learn the dark. We don’t die. We never die. We only love harder. We only see sharper. I can appear and disappear in seconds, at will. I can look like a not-sin, a non-outcast. People like us don’t need a club full of women to find who’ll go down if we look right. We know our signals, our codes. You’re only real when everyone can see you.”

~ Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds! 

“Choose me over it, choose me over your head screaming no; it’s the one who’s lying and you know it, the rest of you is yelling yes in the truest languages. Your feet bring you to me before you can think, your hands turn your steering wheel in my direction every single evening after work, your heart won’t stop babbling next to me. Go with your body; rest, lie your head here, rest; make a home here, rest.”

~ Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds! 

“You’re not more important because you’re alive or because you see this way up or because you walk with your legs and breathe from your face. That it’s the only way you know does not mean it’s the only way there is. You share this place with flesh and not-flesh; it’s just as much their city as it is yours. Don’t think that just because they forgive you all the time—for running into them, for bumping against them, for slamming their fingers into doors, for not answering when they call you, for stepping on them as they’re sunbathing on the road’s shoulder—they no longer exist, that their lives will not still touch your life. They are merely forgiving you. All that is mercy; they are only giving you chance.”

~ Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds! 

“She got us the life, but it crushed us. When they give you the masks, they advise you to take them off when you can, but they don’t tell you why. They should, though They should tell you that if you don’t take breaks from your acting, the false skin will grow on you, that you might have to sit down and watch the mask chew off your lover’s face.”

~ Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds! 

“Freedom will have to be imagined by the shapeshifters, actors, invisibles, ghosts, magicians, vagabonds, outcasts, outsiders. Always the only hope. I combed the country for as many as I could find and I watched them, for my own heart, for my own hope, for my own personal goings-on. Because that is my sustenance. I need hope the way people need blood, the way people need food. And they need, as we all do, somebody to see them, to bear them witness, to watch over them lovingly. So I did. And I do. I see them and I love them and I’m unashamed of my heart. They are my diamonds in the dust.”

~ Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds! 

“If they say we don’t exist, that they can’t see us anywhere except in rotten corners, in perverse bodies, how come I can see you and hold you and you’re holy; how come I can love you and home you and you’re there, in flesh, in my mind, in my blood; how come I keep waking up in this love and feel rested? What else to do now then, when a love like this finds you? What else but praise? What else but dance?”

~ Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds!