Emmanuel Jal Quotes

Violence in Darfur is cataclysmic.

In Africa, music is for everything, Music was originally used for community. That was what music was for.

For many Sudanese, it's for strength they choose to be Christian rather than Muslim. My mum was a Muslim but she became a Christian later.

When I was in south Sudan, people used to rap in my village. But the rapping was more in the mother tongue, Nuer.

I don't take modern hip-hop as real. It's entertaining, it's fake, like James Bond.

As a child, I didn't know what they mean by 'to die.' So I grew up in a place where people used to die all the time, but a child is not allowed to see a dead body. When you ask, 'Where is so-and so?' you're told, 'He's gone to another world where we all go to live in the future.'

There's no pride in having been a child soldier.

Any child soldier has to go through a lot of love, care and understanding to become normal.

The worst people on earth are not only those who commit evil, but those who stand by and turn a blind eye

Music - it's the only thing that can enter your system, your mind, your heart, without your permission.

Education is the only solution for peace.

If I sleep for more than half an hour, I get horrible dreams in which I'm firing a gun and helicopters are coming down.

The only foreign policy advice I heard from China was when they said to Sudan, 'Don't go back to war.' That's all they said. They didn't push anything else.

Only a coward will use a gun to protect and get respect for themselves.

Music moves my emotions because music loosens me up.

Knife crime and gun crime is poverty-driven, and poverty leads to insecurity.

I don't know anywhere where the people are hungrier for education than South Sudan.

I'm rapping in English but in an African way. I'm not trying to sound like an American.

I'm kind of weird - I don't get excited. Sometimes I fake that I'm excited just to make people happy.

Young people are so brave when they go to fight.

Music is actually where I see heaven.

I still have nightmares of dead comrades, a long time ago, talking to me. 'Emmanuel, don't forget about us, don't give up, keep telling our story.'

A lot of child soldiers lose their minds.

I lost my childhood. I didn't play football or video games. Or have birthdays or the love of a family.

The wealthiest Sudanese don't know what war is. Their children are safe in school.

What I always wanted to do when I was a kid was to speak out and help people which I continue to do afterwards.

War destroys people's souls. Most people focus on physical injuries, but the invisible injuries can take a lifetime to heal and affects the lives of generations to come.

When you see a Sudanese walking on the street, there is a story.

To tell my story, to touch lives.

Rap music is amazing, it's beautiful. But the problem is the lyrics. The person who writes the lyrics - that's the problem.

The first time I experienced war, I thought the world was ending.

Music is powerful. It is the only thing that can speak into your mind, your heart and your soul without your permission.

It's no longer about the Lost Boys. They keep trying to make their way out, then they meet other people and empathize with them. It's a story that a lot of people are going to discover their purpose from. When someone doesn't know their purpose, they get lost.

Sometimes words are not needed, and the simplicity of expressing yourself through an art form is one of the best ways of communication.

I had thought about forgiveness more and more ... I knew it wasn't a light that could be switched on in an instant-it grew day by day, week by week, month by month-but something was changing inside me now during the hours when I sat alone and tried to calm my feelings. A seed had been sown, and I sensed that, just as I'd once faced a choice about whether to use violence on the night when I stared at the gun, I know had another choice: to remain trapped in the bitterness of the past or to find peace in the present.

Peace may be negotiated by politicians, but it is something written in hearts and minds not on pieces of paper

If you really kill, you don't want to talk about it.

We lack role models who can inspire our young people to make change.

When I listen to hip-hop, it's like no big difference how people sing in my village, 'cause bling would be their cow.