“What is translated from English and into English – and in what quantities – is a question of power.”

The Bible affects everybody’s life who is a Christian, from the middle class in Europe to the peasant in Africa and Asia.

The same questions are there in Native American languages, they’re there in native Canadian languages, they’re there is some marginalized European languages, like say, Irish.

The Bible has affected their lives, but in translation, since they do not read the Bible in the original Greek or Hebrew.

Through the act of translation we break out of linguistic confinement and reach many other communities.

So what I thought was just an African problem or issue is actually a global phenomenon about relationships of power between languages and cultures.

Of course it’s very, very important for me to feel Kenya, to feel, every day, this is where images come from. So to be taken away from that by political pressure or other means – one is taken away from the area, which is the basis of inspiration – is difficult.

I think a repressive regime always fears people who are awakened – particularly ordinary people. If they are awakened, I think governments all over the world feel uncomfortable about that; they want to be in control.

Many people do not know that Jesus did not speak Latin or English or Hebrew; he spoke Aramaic. But nobody knows that language.

A person who acquires English has access to all the things that that language makes possible.

For me, being in prison writing in an African language was a way of saying: “Even if you put me in prison, I will keep on writing in the language which made you put me in prison.”

If poverty was to be sold three cents today, i can’t buy it.

The Pan-Africanism that envisaged the ideal of wholeness was gradually cut down to the size of a continent, then a nation, a region, an ethnos, a clan, and even a village in some instances But Pan-Africanism has not outlived its mission.

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

Those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould it and those committed to breaking it up; those who aim to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow […] and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes

Then they begin to see through their language that the problems described there are the same as the problems they are having. They can identify with characters from another language group.

So we’re talking about the Bible itself being a translation of a translation of a translation. And, in reality, it has affected people’s lives in history.

I tend to curse in French more often than I do in English.

Nowadays, anyone who cannot speak English and is incapable of using the Internet is regarded as backward.

I think maybe the English don’t want to try something and look stupid, because they are a bit reserved.

We cannot look at the Latino community and preach ‘one language.’ No one gave them an English test before they sent them to Iraq to fight for America.

Economists who speak the English tongue are strangely intimidated by mathematical symbols.

Tend to be people who didn’t take S.A.T.s, or first-time voters, or people with English as a second language.

The English possess too many agreeable traits to permit them to be as much disliked as they think and hope they are.

In fact, many of the quotes in my books are quotes which were translated from English and that I read already translated into Spanish.