Ryszard Kapuscinski

“When is a crisis reached? When questions arise that can't be answered.”

“He killed his enemies because he was afraid they would kill him. Amin ordered entire tribes to be put to death, because he feared they would rebel.”

“People were really interested in what was going on because of the international context of the Cold War.”

“Amin is the shame of the whole world. The fact that he managed to rule so long and commit so many crimes was only possible thanks to the hypocrisy of the East and the West who were waging the Cold War for world domination.”

“Conditions were so hard. To send the news out, telex was the only means, but telex was very rare in Africa. So if somebody was flying to Europe, we gave him correspondence to send after he arrived.”

“This is the most intimate relationship between literature and its readers: they treat the text as a part of themselves, as a possession.”

“There are several reasons why Russians view the oppressive state positively. First, in the Russian Orthodox religion, there is an understanding of authority as something sent by God.”

“There is a fundamental difference between the Polish experience of the state and the Russian experience. In the Polish experience, the state was always a foreign power. So, to hate the state was a patriotic act.”

“Be careful: they have arms, and no alternatives.”

“Underground literature only began in the '70s, when technical developments made it possible. Before that, we were involved in a game with the censors. That was our struggle.”

“Amin hid nothing. Everybody knew everything. Yet the American Senate only introduced a resolution breaking off trade with Amin three months before his overthrow.”

“The extent of one man's guilt may be defined by how much of it is experienced by the party he injured.”

“The Cold War was waged in a particularly brutal and cynical way in Africa, and Africa seemed powerless to do anything to stop it.”

“I'm trying to put more elements of the essay into my writing.”

“I'll tell you what colonial experience is.”