Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor Quotes

• I think every morning we wake up offers a new beginning, a new way of stepping into the day. I think every conversation could be a new chance.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Morning, New Beginnings, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  12 Copy quote

• Even though we've written epic poems and made incredible films about love, I still don't think anyone can understand what it is, or why it means everything.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Mean, Epic, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  13 Copy quote

• Matters of the subconscious affect reality in ways we don't quite realize.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Reality, Matter, Way

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  11 Copy quote

• Recording stories is a way of honoring the faculty of memory, even if it's recorded, outsourcing memory to technology.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Memories, Technology, Stories

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I don't think Kenya is the only country that tries to induce amnesia - it seems to be a global phenomenon. But offenses do not die. They do not disappear.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Country, Thinking, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  9 Copy quote

• I get turned on by the idea of an essence - finding the essence of the thing.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Essence, Ideas, Findings

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

• Even if you're in charge of the grand story there's still memory. The other stories do not go away.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Memories, Going Away, Stories

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  8 Copy quote

• For Kenya: we have a chance to start again each time we meet one another. The ghosts do not need to define the future.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Needs, Kenya, Chance

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  9 Copy quote

• I am indebted to anyone who has ever written anything. I am indebted to the unknown carver of pictograms on a gallery of stone panels, which I encountered and stood in silence before on top of a distant odd-shaped hill in northern Kenya. For whatever reason the muses have most unexpectedly invited me to join this immense procession. I am humbled and delighted.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Silence, Kenya, Stones

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  10 Copy quote

• I can edit into infinity. It's such a joy. I'd probably edit until the last word. Until there's only one word left.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Joy, Lasts, Infinity

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  7 Copy quote

• Novel-writing is a settling, lovely space. I call it self-indulgent - I feel mildly guilty about it.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Writing, Self, Space

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Every Kenyan writer has offered me something to hold onto, something to believe in.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Believe

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  9 Copy quote

• One day, I was running to the river. Along the way there was the most exquisite butterfly, a tiny little thing, on the pavement. I kind of jumped over it. And then two days later I woke up in the middle of the night with a character running, jumping over butterflies on the streets of Nairobi. After that, I followed the story. The story wrote itself.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Running, Butterfly, Character

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  7 Copy quote

• Even if we want to eradicate our ghosts, our dead, our murdered, even if you erase a name and the record of the existence of a person, somebody remembers.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Names, Records, Want

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Kenya is an immense land with a capacity for healing.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Healing, Land, Kenya

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I come from a culture that has refined the art of the dirge to a sublime level.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Art, Sublime, Culture

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

• Dying away from home, away from the soil of your birth - and to do so unseen and unmourned - is a profound horror.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Home, Profound, Dying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

• I like talking to myself and making patterns out of the letters of the alphabet on blank surfaces.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Talking, Letters, Patterns

  Interview with Mildred Kiconco Barya, www.pambazuka.org. June 18, 2009.

  6 Copy quote

• The young readers I have interacted with carry old concerns repackaged in the skin of a new generation: puzzlement over continuous national moral failings, contradictions with the elders, nostalgia for a nonexistent Kenyan past.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Past, Skins, Generations

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

• It may not seem that way, but I am an absolute optimist, an unrepentant optimist.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  May, Way, Optimist

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  6 Copy quote

• In my perfect imagination, with stern discipline I rise with the first bird, salute the dawn, have a healthy breakfast of fruits, wander over to my faux-oak desk, tap the On button on my Macbook Air, acknowledge the muse, and skip into the world where the story flows over the day and into the night.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Night, Air, Discipline

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

• Burma evoked the lost Kenyan soldiers who served in the war. You never hear about them. There were a significant number of casualties, men who never came back home. But they're never commemorated.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  War, Home, Men

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  7 Copy quote

• I do need to find inner tranquillity and get into a "zone" before I switch on the computer to work on a story. Only after this do I enter the story world, where I meet the characters and, together, we work through the day and night.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Character, Night, Together

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Kenya is a mercurial character. I feel the country has a presence that can turn on its people in a very violent way.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Country, Character, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• The truth, and nothing but the truth, is that dawn begins with a wrestling match with my soul and a systematic rejection of all the other useful possibilities a day offers. I make obeisance to the story, its characters, and the muse with burnt offerings.

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Character, Wrestling, Offering

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

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