Quotes from Ng?g? wa Thiong'o

The condition of women in a nation is the real measure of its progress.

Our people think: I , Wangari, a Kenyan by birth - how can I be a vagrant in my own country as if I were a foreigner.

What Waringa tried hard to avoid was looking at the pictures of the walls and windows of the church. Many of the pictures showed Jesus in the arms of the virgin Mary or on the cross. But others depicted the devil, with two cow-like horns and a tail like a monkey's, raising one leg in a dance of evil, while his angels, armed with burning pitchforks, turned over human beings on a bonfire. The Virgin Mary, Jesus and God's angels were white, like European, but the devil and his angels were black.

Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.

As she stared at them, Waringa noted that their skins were indeed red, like that of pigs or like the skin of a black person who has been scalded with boiling water or who has burned himself with acid creams. Even the hair in their arms and necks stood out stiff and straight like the bristle of an aging hog.

Written words can also sing.

Our fathers fought bravely. But do you know the biggest weapon unleashed by the enemy against them? It was not the Maxim gun. It was division among them. Why? Because a people united in faith are stronger than the bomb

Belief in yourself is more important than endless worries of what others think of you. Value yourself and others will value you. Validation is best that comes from within.

Stories, like food, lose their flavor if cooked in a hurry.

He carried the Bible; the soldier carried the gun; the administrator and the settler carried the coin. Christianity, Commerce, Civilization: the Bible, the Coin, the Gun: Holy Trinity.

Your own actions are a better mirror of your life than the actions of all your enemies put together.

I believe that black has been oppressed by white; female by male; peasant by landlord; and worker by lord of capital. It follows from this that the black female worker and peasant is the most oppressed. She is oppressed on account of her color like all black people in the world; she is oppressed on account of her gender like all women in the world; and she is exploited and oppressed on account of her class like all workers and peasants in the world. Three burdens she has to carry.

Prescription of the correct cure is dependent on a rigorous analysis of the reality.

This land used to yield. Rains used not to fail. What happened?' inquired Ruoro. It was Muturi who answered. 'You forget that in those days the land was not for buying. It was for use. It was also plenty, you need not have beaten one yard over and over again.

The present predicaments of Africa are often not a matter of personal choice: they arise from a historical situation. Their solutions are not so much a matter of personal decision as that of a fundamental social transformation of the structures of our societies starting with a real break with imperialism and its internal ruling allies. Imperialism and its comprador alliances in Africa can never develop the continent.

for I had reached a point in my life when I came to view words differently. A closer look at language could reveal the secret of life.

Surely my mother could do anything to which she set her mind

Unshed tears of an unrequited desire for vengeance are exhausting and require privacy.

There are some people, be they black or white, who don't want others to rise above them. They want to be the source of all knowledge and share it piecemeal to others less endowed. That is what's wrong with all these carpenters and men who have a certain knowledge. It is the same with rich people.

it would be good to reconcile all these antagonisms.

Language as culture is the collective memory bank of a people's experience in history.

Hoy a los niños se les enseña a cerrar los ojos y a bloquear los oídos para que nunca vean las necesidades del pueblo ni oigan sus gemidos. El que solía oír, hoy se ha convertido en sordo. El resultado de esos colegios son aquellos de quienes se dice: «¡Lástima de esta generación, porque tienen ojos y no pueden ver, y tienen oídos y no pueden oír!». Porque se les ha enseñado a ver y oír un solo mundo.

It is rather that I believe in the reality of what's being named more than in the name itself.

Munira relished twilight as a prelude to that awesome shadow. He looked forward to the unwilled immersion into people, huts, without consciously choosing the links. To choose involved effort, decision, preference of one possibility, and this could be painful. He had chosen not to choose . . .