Quotes from Ng?g? wa Thiong'o

Berlin of 1884 was effected through the sword and the bullet. But the night of the sword and the bullet was followed by the morning of the chalk and the blackboard. The physical violence of the battlefield was followed by the psychological violence of the classroom. But where the former was visibly brutal, the latter was visibly gentle … The bullet was the means of physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation.

I am drowning: what use would be looking back to the shore from which I fell?

It's terrible when the old have to bury the young. But it is more terrible when neither the old nor the young are there to bury each other.

The church, with its eternal call for submissive trust and blind obedience

Words are the food, body, mirror, and sound of thought. Do you now see the danger of words that want to come out but are unable to do so?

A year as an inmate in Kam?t? has taught me what should have been obvious: that the prison system is a repressive weapon in the hands of a ruling minority to ensure maximum security for its class dictatorship over the rest of the population, and it is not a monopoly exclusive to England and South Africa.

There is a saying that when a bird in flight gets tired, it will land on any tree

What's a state of emergency?' a man asked. 'Oh, don't ask a foolish question. Haven't you heard about Malaya?' 'What about it?' 'There was a state of emergency.

Then he raised his voice and went on: 'Verily I say unto you. This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled...' It was as if darkness too had fallen into the building and there was no one to light the way.

Ngotho had never known where the other son had gone to. Now he understood. He wanted to tell of his own son: he longed to say, 'You took him away from me'. But he kept quiet. Only he thought Mr Howlands should not complain. It had been his war.

No. He'll remain here. But - but - you sometimes get a feeling you're going away from someone forever...

To build calls for hard work, From the one who looks to tomorrow. To destroy is easy work, For one who wants to return to yesterday, Like a grown person wishing to remain a child.

Human-to-human cruelty is worse than that of beast to human. Worse still is the cruelty among neighbors when it drives them To raise machetes, spears, arrows, and clubs against one another.

Woman is the mother of life, For she is the one who carries the womb of life. Woman is the carrier of creation. We show her gratitude always.

Disability of the body does not mean disability of the heart and mind.

Everything owns a sound, loud or soft. When sound hits a thing, it comes back an echo. Mumbi said -Everything sends back a sound, however soft. If you listen to an echo with care, you can tell where it is coming from. The ear is the eye of the soul. It sorts out the sound and the echo and tells us what makes the sound and where it is coming from

That was one of the most rewarding things about spending nights in the open. Birds were bound to wake you up, and whether they carried good or bad luck, at least they woke you up with music.

For literature, all the world is a stage.

Luckily for me, I loved books. Books can enlighten but can also benight, but at least one can play one off against another.

Truth never dies.

The dynamic inter-linkage of art forms in orature is thus seen as reflecting a Weltanschauung that assumes the normality of the connection between nature, nurture, supernatural, and supernurtural. I