Binyavanga Wainaina Quotes

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

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.

I, Binyavanga Wainaina, quite honestly swear I have known I am a homosexual since I was five.

I believe in, and will to the best of my ability fight for, equal rights and freedom of opinion for everyone, regardless of colour, religion, nationality, orientation - you know the rest.

Every human being has a bit of gangster in him.

I'm extremely optimistic about rapid transformation and change of things in Africa in general.

I am quite excited that Moi is leaving. Kenyans have changed. We have a free press, and it is no longer a situation of 'follow in my footsteps.'

When art as an expression starts to appear, without prompting, all over the suburbs and villages of this country, what we are saying is: we are confident enough to create our own living, our own entertainment, our own aesthetic. Such an aesthetic will not be donated to us from the corridors of a university; or from the Ministry of Culture, or by the French Cultural Centre. It will come from the individual creations of a thousand creative people

All people have dignity. There's nobody who was born without a soul and a spirit.

I like the idea of readers feeling a familiarity, whether it's with Africa or childhood.

Everywhere I go, I see young people: Confident, forward looking. I have seen them in Lagos, in Rwanda, in the suburbs of London.

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.

When I went to live in South Africa, I immediately began to understand what went wrong. Because here was a place supposed to be under apartheid - I arrived there in 1991 - but here a black person had more say and had more influence over his white government than an average Kenyan had over the Moi government.

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

It is an aspect of Kenya I am always acutely aware of - and crave, because I don't have it all. My third language, Gikuyu, is nearly non-existent; I can't speak it. It is a phantom limb...

There is no country in the world with the diversity, confidence and talent and black pride like Nigeria.

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

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.

I love playing with words and texture.

It is a pink and blue feeling, as sharp as clear sky; a slight breeze, and the edges of Lake Nakuru would rise like the ruffle at the edge of a skirt; and I am pockmarked with whole-body pinpricks of potentiality. A stretch of my body would surely stretch as far as the sky. The whole universe poised, and I am the agent of any movement.

There is an ache in my chest today, sweet, searching, and painful, like a tongue that is cut and tingles with sweetness and pain after eating a strong pineapple.