"the Theory of Other Worlds. Simply put, it said that when knowledge or power went out of this world it did two things: first, it created another place; and second, it left a hole, a door between this world where it had once existed and the new place it had made."

"Several times Waves passed over our heads, but they fell back the next instant. We were drenched, we were numbed, we were blinded, we were deafened; but always we were saved."

"Suddenly I saw in front of me the Statue of the Faun, the Statue that I love above all others. There was his calm, faintly smiling face; there was his forefinger gently pressed to his lips. [...] Hush! he told me. Be comforted!"

"The only way to escape from the world is to create our own."

"The truth is a strange thing. It is often hidden in plain sight, but we are blind to it."

"There are many truths in the world, and they are not always compatible."

"The world is not what it seems. It is a reflection of our own minds."

"The world is a series of rooms, and there is no end to them."

"The world is a beautiful place, even in its darkness."

"I have a very bad memory, and I am often confused about what is real and what is not."

"I am the only person who has ever tried to make a map of the entire world. It is a very difficult task, as the world is very large, and very strange."

"I am not sure who I am. I am not sure if I have always been here, or if I have come from somewhere else."

"Exile as a mode of genius no longer exists; in place of Joyce we have the fragments of work appearing in Index on Censorship."

"The gap between the committed and the indifferent is a Sahara whose faint trails, followed by the mind's eye only, fade out in sand."

"Censorship may have to do with literature; but literature has nothing whatever to do with censorship."

"Rebirth. I mean by this simply what happens when the child begins to realise the fact that the black does not enter through the white’s front door is not in the same category as the fact that the dead will never come back."

"Mumbling obeisance to abhorrence of apartheid is like those lapsed believers who cross themselves when entering a church."

"The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Ideology demands it. Society exacts it."

"The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is."

"A desert is a place without expectation."

"Learning to write sent me falling, falling through the surface of the South African way of life."

"There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice."

"Next year" might mean anything. It might mean another failure. It would certainly mean no more than a partial recovery. The miraculous reprieve was not going to be granted. Nothing would change: nothing ever did."

"What had happened was that the formal pattern of black-and-white, mistress-and-servant, had been broken by the personal relation; and when a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is his chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip."

"Though what thoughts of regret, or pity, or perhaps even wounded human affection were compounded with the satisfaction of his completed revenge, it is impossible to say."

"She needed to think of Dick, the man to whom she was irrevocably married, as a person on his own account, a success from his own efforts. When she saw him weak and goalless, and pitiful, she hated him, and the hate turned in on herself. She needed a man stronger than herself, and she was trying to create one out of Dick."

"Wikisource-The Grass Is Singing"

"That lazy insolence stung her into an inarticulate rage. She opened her mouth to storm at him, but remained speechless. And she saw in his eyes that sullen resentment, and—what put the finishing touch to it—amused contempt."

"Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity."

"If the white man's religion made you abandon a custom and then did not give you something else of equal value, you became lost."

"Go to the Mission place. Learn all the wisdom and all the secrets of the white man. But do not follow his vices. Be true to your people and the ancient rites.""

"Many boys from the hills and beyond, from Kiambu and Murang, came there for a portion of the white man's magic.""

"Circumcision of women was not important as a physical operation. It was what it did inside a person. It could not be stopped overnight. Patience and, above all, education, were needed."

"She had learnt the value of Christian submission, and she thought every other believer had the same attitude to life. Not that she questioned life. It had given her a man and in her own way she loved and cared for him. Her faith and belief in God were coupled with her fear for Joshua. But that was religion and it was the way things were ordered. However, one could still tell by her eyes that this was a religion learnt and accepted; inside the true Gikuyu woman was sleeping."

"A young man who rises to leadership is always a target of jealousy for his equals, for those older than himself and for those who think they could have been better leaders."

"His house had a strong Christian foundation and he wanted his daughters to wax strong in faith and the ways of God. Would this not prove to all what a Christian home should be like?""

"Nyambura knew then that she could never be saved by Christ; that the Christ who died could only be meaningful if Waiyaki was there for her to touch, for her to feel and talk to. She could only be saved through Waiyaki. Waiyaki was her saviour, her black Messiah, the promised one who would come and lead her into the light."

"The land was now silent. The two ridges lay side by side, hidden in the darkness. And the Honia river went on flowing between them...""

"Honia was the soul of Kameno and Makuyu. It joined them. And men, cattle, wild beasts and trees, were all united by this life-stream.”"

"The white man cannot speak the language of the hills.”"

"What had brought all this trouble? Waiyaki blamed himself.""

"She who had once taken everything at its face value, never noticing the inflection of a phrase, or the look on a face which contradicted what was actually being said, spent the hour’s drive home considering the implications of that man’s gentle amusement at Dick. She wondered for the first time, whether she had been deluding herself"

"There were rumours that a Government Post would soon be built at Makuyu and that the hills would be ruled from there. In his last visit, one of the white men had announced that people in these regions would soon begin paying taxes to a government in Nairobi.""

"He saw only schools, schools everywhere and the thirst that had burned the throats of so many children who had looked up to him for the quenching water. And he wanted to feel all would get this water.""

"The oilskin of the house is not for rubbing into the skin of strangers."

"That teacher is good. He beats them hard.”"

"Don’t run away, Teacher.""

"A savior had come. He had opened the eyes of the people. He had awakened the sleeping lions. They would now roar, roar to victory.""

"For once, I give you permission to go to Kameno. Go to that woman you call aunt. Tell Muthoni to come back. If she agrees we shall forget everything. If she does not, then tell her that she ceases to be my daughter.""

"Amatu is lost, yes Amatu is lost."