5 Quotes & Sayings By Binyavanga Wainaina

Binyavanga Wainaina was born in 1972 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he still lives with his family. He studied at Makerere University, Mombasa University, and Columbia University. His work has been translated into over thirty languages. Winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Africa, Wainaina is best known for his memoirs—Fictionville (2001), A Long Way Gone (2004), and Another Day in Paradise (2008)—as well as his novels Like Any Other Morning (1999) and The Old Days (2003) Read more

Wainaina’s short fiction appears in Granta 111; his story “Punch Drunk” appears in The Times Literary Supplement. His plays have been produced in London (The Old Days), New York (The World's My Oyster), and South Africa (The Serpent King); he has also written extensively on politics in Africa. He is the author of Our Lady of the Nile: A Memoir of Survival in Revolutionary Times (2010) and The Songlines: Journeys Along the Ghost Road of an African Generation (2010).

1
Cloud travel is well and good when you have mastered the landings. I never have. I must live, not dream about living. Binyavanga Wainaina
2
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 . Binyavanga Wainaina
3
I have learned that I, we, are a dollar-a-day people (which is terrible, they say, because a cow in Japan is worth $9 a day). This means that a Japanese cow would be a middle class Kenyan... a $9-a-day cow from Japan could very well head a humanitarian NGO in Kenya. Massages are very cheap in Nairobi, so the cow would be comfortable. Binyavanga Wainaina
4
I want to be fighting for a society accountable towards its citizens. Binyavanga Wainaina