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Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat.

— Binyavanga Wainaina How to Write About Africa (2005)

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More quotes by Binyavanga Wainaina

My laugh is far away inside, like the morning car not starting when the key turns.

One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir (2011)

Science is smaller than music, than the patterns of the body; the large confident world of sound and body gathers. If my mind and body are quickening, lagging behind is a rising anxiety of words.

One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir (2011)

Among your characters you must always include The Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West.

How to Write About Africa (2005)

We fail to trust that we knew ourselves to be possible from the beginning.

One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir (2011)

The Loyal Servant always behaves like a seven-year-old and needs a firm hand; he is scared of snakes, good with children, and always involving you in his complex domestic dramas.

How to Write About Africa (2005)

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The emphasis of study upon a particular aspect of music is in itself ideological because it contains implications about the music's value.

Lucy Green

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Thomas Carlyle Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

Eduard Hanslick

Above the pitch, out of tune, and off the hinges.

François Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

Attribution

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