Binyavanga Wainaina Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“Living in South Africa and periodically coming back to Kenya, my relationship with officialdom in Kenya was just insane.”

“I love playing with words and texture.”

“We are a mixed up people. We have mixed up ways of naming, too... When my father's brothers and sisters first went to colonial schools, they had to produce a surname. They also had to show they were good Christians by adopting a western name. They adopted my grandfather's name as surname. Wainaina.”

“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.”

“Every one, we, we homosexuals, are people, and we need our oxygen to breathe.”

“I knew I didn't want to come out in the 'New Yorker'; it just felt wrong. It needed an African conversation.”

“I want to be fighting for a society accountable towards its citizens.”

“I'm not even sure I want to use the term 'coming out.'”

“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.”

“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.”