Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

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

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Even if we want to eradicate our ghosts, our dead, our murdered, even if you erase a name and the record of…

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

The truth, and nothing but the truth, is that dawn begins with a wrestling match with my soul and a systematic rejection…

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

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

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

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

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Kenya is an immense land with a capacity for healing.

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

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

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

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

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Burma evoked the lost Kenyan soldiers who served in the war. You never hear about them. There were a significant number of…

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

I think every morning we wake up offers a new beginning, a new way of stepping into the day. I think every…

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

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

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

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

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

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

I do need to find inner tranquillity and get into a "zone" before I switch on the computer to work on a…

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

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

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Dying away from home, away from the soil of your birth - and to do so unseen and unmourned - is a…

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

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

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

I don't think Kenya is the only country that tries to induce amnesia - it seems to be a global phenomenon. But…

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

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

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

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

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

In my perfect imagination, with stern discipline I rise with the first bird, salute the dawn, have a healthy breakfast of fruits,…

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

One day, I was running to the river. Along the way there was the most exquisite butterfly, a tiny little thing, on…

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Even though we've written epic poems and made incredible films about love, I still don't think anyone can understand what it is,…

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

I am indebted to anyone who has ever written anything. I am indebted to the unknown carver of pictograms on a gallery…

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

The young readers I have interacted with carry old concerns repackaged in the skin of a new generation: puzzlement over continuous national…

— Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor