African Writer Quotes & Sayings

I consider myself West African, among other cultural identities, and a writer, among other creative ones. — Taiye Selasi

I've come across a novel called The Palm-Wine Drinkard, by the Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, that is really remarkable because it is a kind of fantasy of West African mythology all told in West African English which, of course, is not the same as standard English. — William Golding

I have no particular plan in life - and that's something I rather like. Most things that people do seem to me to be rather dull and silly. In my ideal life I'd be left alone to read — Elizabeth Knox

In 2013, science writer Natalie Angier gave the centrality of female friendship a zoological boost, pointing out that, In animals as diverse as African elephants and barnyard mice, blue monkeys of Kenya and feral horses of New Zealand, affiliative, long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationships between females turns out to be the basic unit of social life. — Rebecca Traister

It should be forbidden to be so handsome. — Cristiane Serruya

African narratives in the West, they proliferate. I really don't care anymore. I'm more interested in the stories we tell about ourselves - how, as a writer, I find that African writers have always been the curators of our humanity on this continent. — Chris Abani

Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we all got along. If there were no terrorism, Islamophobia, Western hypocrisy, corrupt government in African countries (especially Liberia), sexism, nativism, people like Donald Trump, stereotypes, war, Capitalism, Communism, Marxism and xenophobia. — Henry Johnson Jr

As she watched all of this, Liesel was certain that these were the poorest souls alive. That's what she wrote about them ... Some looked appealingly at those who had come to observe their humiliation, this prelude to their deaths. Others pleaded for someone, anyone to step forward and catch them in their arms.
No one did. — Markus Zusak

We found out the Gemini spacesuit was, well, oxygen was flowing to keep me cool as well as to breathe, and it wasn't good enough. My visor got fogged. — Eugene Cernan

The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience. — Chinua Achebe

Clearly, she was enjoying herself to see that woman hurt. It was nothing she had desired. Nor did it seem as if she could control it, this inhuman sweet sensation to see another human being squirming. It hit her like a stone, the knowledge that there is pleasure in hurting. A strong three-dimensional pleasure, an exclusive masculine delight that is exhilarating beyond all measure. And this too is God's gift to man? She wondered. — Ama Ata Aidoo

I don't live my life as a writer. I'm a mother, an African-American woman, and I do everything that everybody else does - cook and a little bit of cleaning. — Terry McMillan

From all around the Third World,
You hear the same story;
Rulers
Asleep to all things at
All times -
Conscious only of
Riches, which they gather in a
Coma -
Intravenously
So that
You wouldn't know they were
Feeding if it was not for the
Occasional
Tell-tale trickle somewhere
Around the mouth.
And when they are jolted awake,
They stare about them with
Unseeing eyes, just
Sleepwalkers in a nightmare. — Ama Ata Aidoo

There are things that I would like to do, but I make a big distinction between liking to do something and wanting to do something. If there's something that I want to do I've done it. If there's something that comes up that I want to do I will do it. — Morgan Freeman

It would be great if all the fast-food outlets, slaughterhouses, these laboratories and the banks who fund them exploded tomorrow. — Bruce Friedrich

One had said, 'You say you come from Ghaanna? Then we have a lot in common!' Sissie didn't know what to do with the statement, uncertain of whether it was a threat or a promise.
'We had chiefs like you,' the Scot went on, 'who fought one another and all, while the Invader marched in.' Sissie thanked her, but also felt strongly that their kinship had better end right there. — Ama Ata Aidoo

I understand why so many female comics quit or change their path, because it is hard. It's hard to be a comedian, and people have so much aggression towards women. I don't really know where that comes from, but I feel a total responsibility, and I'm gonna do my part, to continue on the path that I'm on. — Amy Schumer

Literature doesn't have a country. Shakespeare is an African writer. His Falstaff, for example, is very African in his appetite for life, his largeness of spirit. The characters of Turgenev are ghetto dwellers. Dickens characters are Nigerians. — Ben Okri

u wil win if u do not quit — Ikechukwu Joseph

Love can give you the most exhilarating wonderful highs at times ...
... Then there will be dives that will take all you have just to hold on ...
Quote on the Title Page of Love TORN Asunder — Elizabeth Funderbirk

Many people have compared me to the Victorian adventure writer, Rider Haggard. I accept that as a compliment. As a boy growing up in Central Africa I read all Haggard's African novels. — Wilbur Smith

When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?" Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?" You don't get ideas. Ideas get you. — Connie Willis

People in power will lie to keep it. Honesty doesn't make you less human. — Henry Johnson Jr

I'm an immigrant writer, or an African writer, or an Ethiopian-American writer, and occasionally an American writer according to the whims and needs of my interpreters. — Dinaw Mengestu

Oh, I love labels, as long as they are numerous. I'm an American writer. I'm a Nigerian writer. I'm a Nigerian American writer. I'm an African writer. I'm a Yoruba writer. I'm an African American writer. — Teju Cole

Sissie could see it all. In her uncertain eyes, on her restless hands and on her lips, which she kept biting all the time.
But oh, her skin. It seemed as if according to the motion of her emotions Marija's skin kept switching on and switching off like a two-colour neon sign. So that watching her against the light of the dying summer sun, Sissie could not help thinking that it must be a pretty dangerous matter, being white. It made you feel awfully exposed, rendered you terribly vulnerable. Like being born without your skin or something. As though the Maker had fashioned the body of a human, stuffed it into a polythene bag instead of the regular protective covering, and turned it loose into the world.
Lord, she wondered, is that why, on the whole, they have had to be extra ferocious? Is it so they could feel safe here on the earth, under the sun, the moon and the stars? — Ama Ata Aidoo

It's wrong to look at what we call 'Enlightenment values' as some fad of the 18th century. It's deeply rooted in ancient history. — Matthew Stewart

Shakespeare is in many ways an African writer and 'Hamlet' would be seen as a very accurate historical saga about an African kingdom. — Henning Mankell

There is no living African writer who has not had to, or will not have to, contend with Achebe's work. We are either resisting him - stylistically, politically, or culturally - or we are writing toward him. — Chris Abani

Because books saved my life, literally, I've become close to them — Malebo Sephodi

He who is capable of really reading a writer will have his every question answered by the works themselves. For example, Kafka depicts the dreams & visions of his lonely, difficult life and it is these dreams & visions alone that should preoccupy us & not the interpretations that sharp-witted critics can give these writings. Their interpreting is an intellectual sport, one that is good for clever people who can read & write books on African sculpture or 12-tone music but who never get to the heart of works of art because they stand at the gate fumbling with their 100 keys, blind to the fact that the gate is not really locked. — Hermann Hesse

I left 'Wired' before it was sold to Conde Nast and Lycos, so I didn't experience that transition. — John Battelle

In the future, maybe quantum mechanics will teach us something equally chilling about exactly how we exist from moment to moment of what we like to think of as time. — Richard K. Morgan