The Bible affects everybody’s life who is a Christian, from the middle class in Europe to the peasant in Africa and Asia.
NGUGI WA THIONG'OIt was a revelation for me, in a practical sense, that you could write in an African language and still reach an audience beyond that language through the art of translation.
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.
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What’s good about writing is that when you write novels or fiction, people can see that the problems in one region are similar to problems in another region.
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Another phenomenon developing in Kenya is ethnic cleansing – and that’s the thing that has made me very sad. Because some people will use the cover of the problems of rigged elections to do things that are unacceptable like ethnic cleansing and displacement of people. It’s completely unacceptable.
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I’m more trying to connect; I’m more listening to people. Whatever I get is very meaningful to me.
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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
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Why did Africa let Europe cart away millions of Africa’s souls from the continent to the four corners of the wind?
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Seen as an economic, political, cultural, and psychological re-membering vision, it should continue to guide remembering practices
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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.
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And even in terms of justice, law codes, the legal system. A person who does not know English in Africa is excluded from that system because he can only operate through acts of translation.
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We can appreciate each other’s languages. And the question of being uncomfortable about our languages would go away.
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The Bible has affected their lives, but in translation, since they do not read the Bible in the original Greek or Hebrew.
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A person who acquires English has access to all the things that that language makes possible.
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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.”
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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.
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Any writer likes to be near the area which is the location of his work.
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