Ayi Kwei Armah Quotes

The companionship risked attack from those ambitious todominate others. For it respected no social hierarchies, only the fellowship of shared ideals and work. Those whose powerwas based on force and fraud quickly enough understood that this society of intelligence and wotk, this society of life, the companionship of the ankh, would end their rule if it survived. They tried to destroy it

Changes that seem reasonable, natural and basic," Armah says, "the academic world, far from performing as the rational part of a confused universe, seemed peculiarly denatured in its own right

Vagina sweet, money sweet pass all, who born fool socialism chop make chop country broke you broken not so? Pray for detention jail man chop free

To them that know their destination fatigue is a brief stranger merely passing in the glare of day.

She spoke of those needing the white destroyers' shiny things to bring a feeling of worth into their lives, uttered their deep-rooted inferiority of soul, and called them lacking in the essence of humanity: womanhood in women, manhood in men. For which deficiency they must crave things to eke out their beings, things to fill holes in their spirits.

Purpose lends wings to the traveller.

These men who were to lead us out of our despair,they came like man already grown fat and cynical with the eating of centuries of power they had never struggled for old before they had even been borninto power,and ready only for the grave.

It was to work against such continuous disasters (induced by our interaction with the whites) that the companionship of the ankh was bom: an ellipse of life linking future with past through intelligent work in the present. This, [...] was no royal society. There were farmers and princes and potters in it, there were masons and cobblers and aristocrats and fishers in it, there were priests and scribes in it. They were in the companionship not because they wete peasants or princes or aristocrats or scribes, but because they agreed to work to its aims. [...] Because it was devoted to life, its chosen symbol was the oldest of Africa's life signs, the ankh

The present is were we get lost -- if we forget our past and have no vision of the future.

Here, educated people use their intelligence to avoid risk, to accumulate power, money, privilege. We call it security. That makes our choices sound less cowardly, not so greedy

Words are mere wind, but wind too has always been part of our work, this work of sowers for the future, the work of story-tellers, the work of masters in the arts of eloquence.

A people losing sight of origins are dead. A people deaf to purposes are lost. Under fertile rain, in scorching sunshine there is no difference: their bodies are mere corpses, awaiting final burial.

Alone, i am nothing. i have nothing.we have power.but we will never know it,we will never see it work.unless we come together to make it work.

He saw a fierce, nameless beast, half serpent and half forest cat. The beast had coiled itself around the body of the prince Appia, still alive, and Densu saw it bare its fangs to destroy Appia. In halfawake nightmare state he was in, Densu had only seen the body of the prince. But at the moment when the beast was on the point of sinking its fangs into his neck Densu saw Appia's face. It was his own.

Others have come searching. Wha t they find they take back to America [...] to sell [...]