39 Quotes by Binyavanga Wainaina


  • Author Binyavanga Wainaina
  • Quote

    Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel prize.

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  • Author Binyavanga Wainaina
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    It's like I was always not quite sure even how to move in space somehow; I would watch people and then copy them. I found it really hard to walk straight. My brother was always on at me for walking off the pavement. I guess I always expected people to bring me back into line.

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  • Author Binyavanga Wainaina
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    When I went to live in South Africa, I immediately began to understand what went wrong. Because here was a place supposed to be under apartheid - I arrived there in 1991 - but here a black person had more say and had more influence over his white government than an average Kenyan had over the Moi government.

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  • Author Binyavanga Wainaina
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    There's no point for me in being a writer and having all these blocked places where I feel I can't think freely and imagine freely. There just really is no point.

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  • Author Binyavanga Wainaina
  • Quote

    It is a pink and blue feeling, as sharp as clear sky; a slight breeze, and the edges of Lake Nakuru would rise like the ruffle at the edge of a skirt; and I am pockmarked with whole-body pinpricks of potentiality. A stretch of my body would surely stretch as far as the sky. The whole universe poised, and I am the agent of any movement.

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