Quotes from Lemn Sissay

You can define how strong a democracy is by how its government treats ... the child of the state.

My real mother is a survivor, very strong and respected by the people who know her, but our relationship is not easy - but then, it was never going to be.

To Western parents that want to adopt a child, I would say to people that money is not everything, wealth does not matter.

I have spent most of my adult life proving that I existed. A blog is an accessible way of doing this - there is a date and place in cyberspace that I existed a year ago, to the day, and the proof is still there.

My foster parents were very religious. They told me that they had not decided to take me in, rather that it was God that had decided it for them.

I think we are in an age where cash pays for time and space. The more cash you have, the bigger space you can buy and the smaller the technology to put in it.

A blog is neither a diary nor a journal. Many people think of blogging in relation to those two things, confessional or practical. It is neither but includes elements of both.

Technology will never last if it ignores human beings' basic instinct to express and discover through expression.

When somebody takes a child from their native culture, that is in itself an act of aggression.

You remind me Define me Incline me. If you died I'd.

I think I'll paint roads on my front room walls to convince myself that I'm going places

Food from the platter / Water from the rain / The subject and the matter / I'm going home again / Can't sell a leaf to a tree / Nor the wind to the atmosphere / I know where I am meant to be / And I can't be satisfied here

I do... to this day, think that success is being able to look in the mirror and know that I'm alright on that day. I don't believe I've made it–I believe that I'm making it. I believe that I've found my past so that I can live in the present, it's the most important thing to me. The books and the plays and the touring and the gigs and the speeches and the cash...it all pales into insignificance when compared with knowing that I didn't do anything wrong, and I'm going to be okay now.

Secrets are the stones That sink the boat Take them out, look at them Throw them out and float

Look what was sown by the stars At night across the fields I am not defined by scars But by the incredible ability to heal

A fourteen-year-old boy should never have to ask the questions Who is my mother? and Who are my family? These were not easy questions to formulate in the mind or the mouth because the question comes with others . . . What did I do to deserve this?

A foster child will expose the cracks in the familial veneer. Insomuch as the foster child is a cipher to the dysfunction of a family and also a seer. But the responsibility is too great for a child and so he finds himself manipulated and blamed for what he exposes by the simple virtue of innocence. The wrath this innocence incurs is deep and dark.

If they kept their hands by their sides they hoped that I would realise that I was hugging them but they were not hugging me.

My name is Lemn Sissay. My name is Lemn Sissay. My name is Lemn Sissay. My name is Lemn Sissay. My name is Lemn Sissay. My name is Lemn Sissay. My name is Lemn Sissay. My name is Lemn Sissay. My name is Lemn Sissay. My name is Lemn Sissay.

I am not defined by darkness Confided the night Each dawn I am reminded I am defined by light

Bitterness rots the vessel that carries it.