Dalene Matthee

Dalene Matthee (13 October 1938 – 20 February 2005) was a South African author best known for her four "Forest Novels", written in and around the Knysna Forest.

Quotes

Fiela's Child (1985)

• But memories got left behind while you kept walking on; every time you had to retrace your steps further to return to your memories, and sometimes it was better not to turn back at all.

• unhappiness was something you got used to or something that passed.

• ...What was there to wish for... a wish asked for the unattainable. The impossible.

• God forgives many things, but God never forgives us the wrong we do to a child.
  • p. 279
  • Fiela confronting the magistrate after walking for two days to Knysna in order to find Benjamin

• Get your hands to work, Selling, none of us can understand it.
  • p. 269
  • Fiela addressing her husband Selling after it has become clear that Benjamin will not be returning to the Long Kloof anytime soon.

• To hear, after nine years, that they had found a child that might be yours, was not news that you could take lightly. And if it was the child they had found, only the Lord in Heaven could know how he had got over the mountain to the Long Kloof.
  • p. 138
  • Elias van Rooyen’s reaction to receiving the news about Lukas potentially having been discovered

• What is it that is troubling you? You’re young, but your eyes are old.
  • p. 521
  • Benn, the captain of the pilot ship for whom Benjamin hopes to work confronting the boy and asks him to express his feelings

• An ostrich took a mate for life. It was their nature. Why try and mess up nature? Was the new prosperity not enough for them? …Where would it end?
  • p. 486
  • Fiela reflecting on the trend in the Long Kloof of people breeding ostriches in order to sell their highly valuable feathers

External links

• Fiela's Child