Binyavanga Wainaina Quotes
When I went to live in South Africa, I immediately began to understand what went wrong. Because here was a place supposed to be under apartheid - I arrived there in 1991 - but here a black person had more say and had more influence over his white government than an average Kenyan had over the Moi government.
Quotes to Explore
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I played competitive golf all my life. Then all of a sudden, when I quit playing the game, I've got all this spare time and this energy. And certainly I wasn't ready to pack up my bags and go sit in front of the television with a shawl on.
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I didn't audition for 'SNL.' I sent in a tape to 'SNL' the year before I started writing there, but I got the job there through doing stand-up on Fallon.
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Every dogma, every philosophic or theological creed, was at its inception a statement in terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience.
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Some days the competition would beat me and I'd go home thinking awful thoughts, want to hide under the bed, depressed. But of course, in the news business, when you're working a daily news broadcast, you get your victories and defeats every day.
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They're always so serious, the orchestras, you know? It's always a fun contrast of that song and the genre of music. And me.
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I'm a fan of all these genres of music, everything from Mumford & Sons to Beach Boys to doo-wop music to reggae.
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I used to be obsessed with race. I'm more obsessed with class now.
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Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
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There is a strong sentiment within the Tea Party that favors a stronger America on the global stage, and with that comes a strong alliance with the State of Israel.
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Entrenched scriptural literalism is, in my opinion, completely out of touch with reality.
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I think some people forget sometimes I do have to go to the grocery store; I do enjoy going out to dinner. I have to get my oil changed from time to time. I do all the normal things. I cut my grass. People kind of forget that normal part, that we do a lot of the stuff that everybody else does, but we all have our talents, and mine is in football.
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It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.
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There's nobody that's ever really been able to take care of me. Johnny did for a bit. I believed what he said. Like if I said, 'What do I do?' he'd tell me. And that's what I missed when I left. I really lost that gauge of somebody I could trust.
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E. Klimov's 'Come and See,' about partisans fighting the Germans in Byelorussia, is the greatest anti-war film ever made.
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We never did these kinds of loans that really started this mess, the subprime loans. We just never got into that business. We were enticed a lot of times to do so by a lot of Wall Street-type players, but I, frankly, never understood some of this stuff.
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I'm unemployable in any other capacity.
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Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.
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When you get to 15 and most of your teachers are priests, there's bound to be a conflict.
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I try not to confuse roles and traits in my own life. Being the Perl god is a role. Being a stubborn cuss is a trait.
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I had a total belief in The Style Council. I meant every word and felt every action.
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We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.
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I have to hear more live instrumentation, more band and more funk, and I don't hear enough of it, so I created it myself.
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If I feel like I've done a great job during an interview with the president of the United States live in the Oval Office, it doesn't give me a tenth of the good feeling of going to the school play and making eye contact with my kids as they're onstage delivering their lines. Nothing compares with that moment of connection.
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When I went to live in South Africa, I immediately began to understand what went wrong. Because here was a place supposed to be under apartheid - I arrived there in 1991 - but here a black person had more say and had more influence over his white government than an average Kenyan had over the Moi government.
