Binyavanga Wainaina Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I get motivated by the fact people are following me, that they want a photo or say 'vamos' or 'Canelo.'
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I wanted to bring people together, and most importantly not feel threatened when they came to watch me box.
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Although China and United States are competitors, China and the United States are indeed partners in trade.
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I think I would make a good spy. I can sort of be a chameleon. People don't notice me very easily. I never get recognized.
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Writers always have confidence issues - it comes with the territory. We never know where we fit in, or what the actual value of our work might be. So we hit lulls, or slogs. Throw in the idea that many creative people are somewhat manic-depressive, and it can get pretty dark at times.
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I'm a liberal, but I'm not biased. Seriously.
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I think people have to set up little battles. They have to demonize people whom they disagree with or feel threatened by. But it's the ideological framing of the debate that scares me.
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I've never really felt like a veteran. I've never felt like the guy who's like, 'OK, everyone needs to look up to me and respect me.' I've always just been one of the guys that people are excited to get in the ring with. That's all I want.
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The thing I learned from 'Pride and Glory' is that people like to feel a little better leaving the theater than they did coming in.
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I found that being with happy positive people annoys me.
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I always had a lot of fun in America, with much more freedom than if I had tried to cook in France. I wouldn't have the same motivation or inspiration, and I wouldn't have cooked for the same kind of people in France, so it wouldn't have given me this edge I had in America.
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I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
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Square meals often make round people.
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Irish history having been forbidden in schools, has been, to a great extent, learned from Raftery's poems by the people of Mayo, where he was born, and of Galway, where he spent his later years.
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I think when you're looking for people to interview, you want to make it fair and honest. You're not just bringing people on so you can beat them up or, you know, make fools out of them or something.
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You go to Paris, or you go to Portugal, you go to Poland, and you ask, 'Who are you people?' They'll tell you, we're Portuguese, we're Spanish, we're Polish. Who are the people that are really European? The people in Brussels, in the E.U. bureaucracy. Europe has not been able to move to the level of patriotic identification with the concept.
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As an actor you can't build up proper relationships with the people you work with, because after six months, you're done.
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I only realised why I keep living in Shepperton when I returned to China. All the people who moved there had come from places just like Shepperton, and so they built and lived in houses exactly like these. I now know I was drawn here because, on an unconscious level, Shepperton reminds me of Shanghai.
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I don't know what makes a writer's voice. It's dozens of things. There are people who write who don't have it. They're tone-deaf, even though they're very fluent. It's an ability, like anything else, being a doctor or a veterinarian, or a musician.
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The best thing that can happen to people entering creative professions is the dwindling of all other possibilities.
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It's fun to move people musically.
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I'm not pro-owner or pro-player. I am pro-football. I want the game to go on. I want the game to be tough. I don't want the game to be a killer of our players.
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Every one, we, we homosexuals, are people, and we need our oxygen to breathe.