A Quote by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

For me, being in prison writing in an African language was a way of saying: "Even if you put me in prison, I will keep on writing in the language which made you put me in prison."
I was wondering why I was put in prison for working in an African language when I had not been put in prison for working in English. So really, in prison I started thinking more seriously about the relation between language and power.
I will get to the truth, if not in Ukrainian courts, then in international ones. I will fight to my last breath. They want to put me in prison but that won't help. My voice will be heard even louder from prison than now, and the whole world will hear me.
Why did the regime put me in prison in the first place? I was put in prison for six years and it has been all illegal.
I hit rock bottom before I even went there. Actually, prison was the rescue mission that God had put on me. He sent out his angels to rescue me. In prison, he protected me the whole time I was in there, and it was just for me to get my will power back, to get my strength back, get my focus together.
Prison was tough on me. I saw people in prison that made me ashamed I was a human being. Some make Qaddafi and Idi Amin look like Sunday-school teachers.
When I was in prison, I read an article - don't be shocked when I say I was in prison. You're still in prison. That's what America means: prison.
To be honest, I would probably rather spend, like, a month in prison than spend a month rehearsing with some musicians, metalheads. I pick prison over that, really. And I say that knowing well what prison is like, so don't get me wrong here. Prison sucks big time.
Until the year 1967, it was a crime, for which you could be put in prison, to make homosexual love to someone in your own house. If they came in and caught you at it, you could be put into prison. This has changed - I'm talking about England, incidentally.
I had a song called "Folsom Prison Blues" that was a hit just before "I Walk The Line." And the people in Texas heard about it at the state prison and got to writing me letters asking me to come down there. So I responded and then the warden called me and asked if I would come down and do a show for the prisoners in Texas.
While I was in prison, I was indulging in all types of vice, right within the prison. And I never was ostracized as much by the penal authorities while I was participating in all of the evils of the prison, as they tried to ostracize me after I became a Muslim.
You can be locked away in prison and be free if your mind is not a prison. Or you can be walking around with lots of credit cards and be in a prison, the prison of your own mind, the prison of your illusions.
How come we never use prison, the failure of prison, as a reason not to give more prison? There's never a moment where we say, 'OK, well, prison hasn't worked, so we're not going to try that again.'
There are laws in some countries, I believe, which prohibit anyone from following you in the street, and if someone does, he can be arrested and put into prison. So, spiritually, I wish there were a police system which would put people into a spiritual prison for following others. In fact, it does happen automatically.
A friend of mine is chief of staff at a big prison in Georgia. Along with giving me a tour of the prison, she allowed me to meet inmates.
The politics of language and the politics of writing really got to me. I've heard this phrase more than once now: this idea of the poetry wars, or the idea that people within the space of writing are at odds with one another or manipulating language to further one's political stance, manipulating language in ways that really felt dirty to me. All of these things worked their way into and through language for me.
Writers around the world protested when two Communist writers, Siniavski and Daniel, were sentenced to prison by their own comrades. But not even churches protest when Christians are put in prison for their faith.
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