53 Quotes by William Kamkwamba

My grandmother Rose was a tough woman, so tough she'd built the family home with her own hands while my grandpa worked as a tailor in the market. She'd even built the furnace and molded the bricks herself, which is not an easy job, and even today, not the job of a woman.

A man in the trading center was caught trying to sell his two young daughters. The buyer had informed the police. People were becoming desperate.

My voice sounded like one of the guinea fowl that screeched in our trees as it pooped, but I never let that stop me.

Maize is just another word for white corn, and by the end of this story, you won't believe how much you know about corn.

It was common for my father to sit my sisters down and tell them things like, "I saw a girl working in the bank in town, and she was a girl just like you." My parents had never completed primary school. They couldn't speak English or even read that well. My parents only knew the language of numbers, buying and selling, but they wanted more for their kids. That's why my father had scraped the money together and kept Annie in school, despite the famine and other troubles.

In better times, we're celebrate Christmas Eve by attending the nativity play at the Catholic church down the road, watching Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus try to escape from Herod's soldiers and their wooden swords and AK-47s (it wasn't the most accurate version, but it was funny.)

Sometimes you can fail in an experiment. But if you fail, you still don't stop observing that thing, looking for a better way.

Climate change is important to Malawi, but many people see alternative energy more as a means to skip the government and get electricity and power. Deforestation is a huge problem in Malawi, which only adds to the problem. People cut down trees because they have no power to run electric stoves, etc. So they use firewood.

People in my village had this mindset that in big cities like New York, if you are lost or without directions, no one will help you. The first time I came here, I tried to make sure not to walk by myself, because it would be difficult for me if I got lost. But people will help you.