Jello Biafra Quotes

“I don't think it's too hippie to want to clean up the planet so you don't wind up dying of some kind of cancer when you're 45 years old. It enrages me that these big cancer-research organizations can't be bothered to man the front lines of environmental protest.”

“You can spend the money on new housing for poor people and the homeless, or you can spend it on a football stadium or a golf course.”

“What do Chile, Biafra, the boat people, Bologna, or Poland matter? All of that comes to be annihilated on the television screen. We are in the era of events without consequences (and of theories without consequences).”

“Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor. For me, at least, I can declare that when I wrote THINGS FALL APART I couldn't have told anyone the day before it was accepted for publication that anybody was going to read it. There was no guarantee; nobody ever said to me, Go and write this, we will publish it and we will read it; it was just there. But my brother-in-law who was not a particularly voracious reader, told me that he read the novel through the night and it gave him a terrible headache the next morning. And I took that as an encouraging endorsement!The triumph of the written word is often attained when the writer achieves union and trust with the reader, who then becomes ready to be drawn deep into unfamiliar territory, walking in borrowed literary shoes so to speak, toward a deeper understanding of self or society, or of foreign peoples, cultures and situations.”

“Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.”

“As for national greatness: It is probably true that all nations are great and even holy at the time of death. The Biafrans had never fought before. They fought well this time. They will never fight again. They will never play Finlandia on an ancient marimba again. Peace.”

“Don't hate the media”

“On some issues, it will be an apparent insult to expect one not to be emotional about it, not to be prejudiced or side one's kit and kin.On issues as deep and as touchy as the Nigerian civil war and its consequences to the easterners, till this present day, to ask me not to cry, not to mourn, not to discuss it, is reduce me to a robot and ask of me a miracle, I am no TB Joshua.I may not discuss it often, but in truth, it was a regrettable and sorrowful experience, for any people at all!”

“Understanding faith can be like trying to hold onto jello. Just when you think you've got a handful of the stuff, all you really have is the residue all over your sticky hands.”

“It was a delicious meal -- skim milk, wheat middlings, leftover pancakes, half a doughnut, the rind of a summer squash, two pieces of stale toast, a third of a gingersnap, a fish tail, one orange peel, several noodles from a noodle soup, the scum off a cup of cocoa, an ancient jelly roll, a strip of paper from the lining of the garbage pail, and a spoonful of raspberry jello.”