Binyavanga Wainaina Quotes

That is the earth, he thought. Not a globe thousands of kilometers around, but a forest with a shining lake, a house hidden at the crest of a hill, high in the trees, a grassy slope leading upwards from the water, fish leaping and birds strafing to take the bugs that lived at the border between water and sky. Earth was the constant noise of crickets, and winds, and birds

The sky is always there for me, while my life has been going through many, many changes. When I look up the sky, it gives me a nice feeling, like looking at an old friend.

Green calm below, blue quietness above.

Orchidbreathing incense into butterfly's wings

Ah, I could lay me down in this long grass And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind Blow over me

Lie on your back and look at the stars.

Aren't the clouds beautiful? I could just lie here all day, and watch them drift by.

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, / The bridal of the earth and sky.

…and there, in the background, the sky’s sediment had sunk to a place where all the woe of the words ‘I am’ dissolved into blue peace. He said it. ‘The ocean.

I have a house on the lake, and I must say, sitting on the dock and taking long morning swims or naked swims under the stars, that just brings me back almost immediately.

Finally from the crease of the ravine I am following, there begins to come the trickling and splashing of water. There is a great restfulness in the sounds these small streams make; they are going down as fast as they can, but their sound seem leisurely and idle, as if produced like gemstones with the greatest patience and care.

Winds and waters keepA hush more dead than any sleep.

I shake my head, watching snow tumble and swirl from an all-white sky. The world seems so clean if you only look up

You made my world stand still, and in that stillness, there was a freedom I never felt before.

For hours she had lain in a kind of gentle torpor, not unlike that sweet lassitude which masters one in the hush of a midsummer noon, when the heat seems to have silenced the very birds and insects, and, lying sunk in the tasselled meadow grasses, one looks up through a level roofing of maple-leaves at the vast, shadowless, and unsuggestive blue.

Let the dog bark; the moon shall beam on.

Peace begins When expectation ends.

On the light of Liberty you saw arise the light of Peace, like "another morn," "Risen on mid-noon;" and the sky on which you closed your eye was cloudless.

I wanted to be calm, like a mound with all its cities destroyed, and tranquil, like a full cemetery.

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves The brilliant moon and all the milky sky And all that famous harmony of leaves Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

When winds are raging o'er the upper ocean And billows wild contend with angry roar, 'Tis said, far down beneath the wild commotion That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore. Far, far beneath, the noise of tempests dieth And silver waves chime ever peacefully, And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flyeth Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.

How silent are the winds!

My goodness, there's nothing that feels better than to meditate, than to get quiet, and then to be at peace, and to tell someone you love them.

Very hot and still the air was, Very smooth the gliding river, Motionless the sleeping shadows.

That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered.