“They want to be the ones telling people: “This is what we have done in history” but when people begin to say, “No this is what we have done in history” it’s a different thing.”

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.

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.

I was wondering why I was put in prison for working in an African language when I had not been put in prison for working in English. So really, in prison I started thinking more seriously about the relation between language and power.

Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

I`m very cautious about what appears to be things put in place that will begin to roll back some of the progress that I believe we`ve made.

I was just thrilled to get the gig to begin with. Ten years later to still have it is not only thrilling but also somewhat of a puzzlement.

When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this, which I take and work with.

Let me begin by saying not only you can’t have democracy with $75 million. You can’t even have it with $750 billion.

I was president then. I’m not president now. When I said it, this would be a sign of goodwill to begin the talks.

When you begin to become conscious, more aware, when your eyes begin to open, the first thing you see is how deluded you are and how much you’re holding onto that which makes you suffer. This is, in many ways, the most important step: Are you willing to be aware?

Once the pursuit of truth begins to haunt the mind, it becomes an ideal never wholly attained.