Ngugi wa Thiong'o

It makes his life more interesting to himself. He invents a meaning for his life, you see. Don’t we all do that? And to die fighting for freedom sounds more heroic than to die by accident.”

As for carrying a gun for the whiteman, well, a time will come when you too will know that every man in the world is alone, and fights alone, to live.”

Gikonyo greedily sucked sour pleasure from this reflection which he saw as a terrible revelation. To live and die alone is the ultimate truth.

Mugo had always found it difficult to make decisions. Recoiling as if by instinct from setting in motion a course of action whose consequences he could not determine before the start, he allowed himself to drift into things or be pushed into them by an uncanny demon; he rode on the wave of circumstance and lay against the crest, fearing but fascinated by fate.

In any case how many took the oath and are now licking the toes of the whiteman?No, you take an oath to confirm a choice already made. The decision to lay or not lay your life for the people lies in the heart. The oath is the water sprinkled on a man's head at baptism.

In Kenya we want deaths which will change things, that is to say, we want true sacrifice. But first we have to be ready to carry the cross. I die for you, you die for me, we become a sacrifice for one another. So I can say that you, Karanja, are Christ. Everybody who takes the Oath of Unity to change things in Kenya is a Christ.

Life had no colour. It was one endless blank sheet, so flat. There were no valleys, streams, no trees–nothing.