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

"I’m nothing, I’m everything,’ he declared. ‘The street is my mother. The sun is my father. What more should I ask of life?”"

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

"The sweetness of honey does not soothe the bee sting."

"it would be fairer to say I have traveled widely, without ever leaving my own native soil, Ive traveled, one might say, through literature, each time Ive opened a book the pages echoed with a noise like the dip of a paddle in midstream, and throughout my odyssey I never crossed a single border, and so never had to produce a passport, Id just pick a destination at random, setting my prejudices firmly to one side, and be welcomed with open arms in places swarming with weird and wonderful characters"

"I want to cry now, not later! I want to be the first because if I cry after the others how will we know that I cried too?"

"When the white people came to Africa, we had the land and they had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed: when we opened them, the white people had the land and we had the Bible."