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Ayi Kwei Armah Quotes

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

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

Ayi Kwei Armah
Past, Visions Of The Future, Forget
Ayi Kwei Armah (2000). “The healers: a novel”, Per Ankh Pub

A mind attacked and conquered is guided easily away from the paths of its own soul.

Ayi Kwei Armah
Soul, Mind, Novelists
Ayi Kwei Armah, Gwendolyn Brooks (1991). “Very Young Poets”, Third World Pr

True, I used to see a lot of hope. I saw men tear down the veils behind which the truth had been hidden. But then the same men, when they have power in their hands at last, began to find the veils useful. They made many more. Life has not changed. Only some people have been growing, becoming different, that is all. After a youth spent fighting the white man, why should not the president discover as he grows older that his real desire has been to be like the white governor himself, to live above all the blackness in the big old slave castle?

Ayi Kwei Armah
Real, Fighting, Men

When you can see the end of things even in their beginnings, there's no more hope, unless you want to pretend, or forget, or get drunk or something.

Ayi Kwei Armah
Hope, Drunk, Want
Ayi Kwei Armah (1988). “The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born”, p.61, Heinemann

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.

Ayi Kwei Armah
Together, Knows
Ayi Kwei Armah (1988). “The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born”, p.87, Heinemann

Where I come from revolution is the only creation, and the revolutionary the only artist.

Ayi Kwei Armah
Artist, Revolution, Revolutionary

Disgust with injustice may sharpen the desire for justice. Readers who don’t see this connection merely wish to be entertained, and I have neither skill nor desire to turn the agony of a people into entertainment.

Ayi Kwei Armah
Agony, Skills, People

How horribly rapid everything has been, from the days when men were not ashamed to talk of souls and of suffering and of hope to these low days of smiles that will never again be sly enough to hide the knowledge of betrayal and deceit.

Ayi Kwei Armah
Betrayal, Men, Soul
Ayi Kwei Armah (1988). “The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born”, p.62, Heinemann

Poets are band leaders who have failed.

Ayi Kwei Armah
Leader, Band, Poet
Ayi Kwei Armah (1988). “The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born”, p.52, Heinemann

The beauty was in the waking of the powerless. Is it always to be true that it is impossible to have things strong and at the same time beautiful? The famished men need not stay famished. But to gorge themselves in this heartbreaking way consuming, utterly destroying the common promise of their greed, was that ever necessary?

Ayi Kwei Armah
Beautiful, Strong, Men
Ayi Kwei Armah (1988). “The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born”, p.85, Heinemann

I did point out that I have no prophetic gifts. I write books because I tried to do something more useful and failed. Since I've been trained to write, I do that as a defense against total despair. And seeing people like you, who are actively engaged in trying to salvage pieces of our wrecked lives, gives me hope that after all we are not alone.

Ayi Kwei Armah
Book, Writing, People

The sand looked so beautiful then, so many little individual grains in the light of the night, giving the watcher the childhood feeling of infinite things finally understood, the humiliating feeling of the watcher's nothingness.

Ayi Kwei Armah
Beautiful, Night, Light
Ayi Kwei Armah (1988). “The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born”, p.72, Heinemann

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