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Listen up, my boy, be realistic! Drop your sitting around and writing every day, there’s people much better at it, and those people, you see them on telly, they talk well, and when they talk there’s a subject, there’s a verb and there’s an object. They’re born for that, they’re raised in that, while us blacks, it’s not our thing, writing.

— Alain Mabanckou Black Bazar (2009)

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More quotes by Alain Mabanckou

He says that the African man was the first man on Earth and that the other races only came after. Therefore, all men are immigrants except African people who are right at home.

Black Bazar (2009)

I’m a man open to the other cultures of the world and I’m not racist at all.

Black Bazar (2009)

The sweetness of honey does not soothe the bee sting.

Black Moses (Petit Piment) (2015)

A fly’s not a bird just because it can fly.

Black Moses (Petit Piment) (2015)

Singing in the old-fashioned language of this good-hearted man, who sold us Hope at the lowest possible price

Black Moses (Petit Piment) (2015)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Alain Mabanckou (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.