Queer African Quotes

“She moved like a woman whose body not only provided her with pleasure, but peace and ease. She moved like a fully embodied universe of her own making.”
― Diriye Osman

“Happiness is two-hour long baths during an energy crisis because it's fantastically irresponsible and fabulous for your soul. Happiness is fresh Spanish perfume on your collarbone and sipping ice-cool Caipirinhas with fun people whilst Mariah Carey's 'Babydoll' plays in the background on a booming system. Happiness is never giving a fuck about becoming fat because you will always fuck, and instead enjoying delicious, deeply satisfying suya and switching your phone off for a whole weekend. Happiness is bad bitches who no longer front like insanity is not festering on every floor of the Western Promise and finally stop giving a fuck. That's happiness.”
― Diriye Osman

“To be queer and Somali and neurodivergent is concentrated alchemy, and yet we constantly raid the cupboards of our souls like we are a people of lack. When you operate from a position of lack, you don’t realise you’re robbing yourself of everything worth preserving, and forgetting to toss away all the empty pursuits that lost their synthetic spell several generations ago. And suddenly, you’re wide awake in a new country, in a new decade, and you’re startled because you can’t remember how you got here or why you’re still feeling hunted by your own reflection. You can’t remember how or when or where or why you misplaced all your breezy dynamism—all that wildness of perception you used to project with such ferocity. Where did it all go? We have conveniently forgotten that we have always been fundamentally idiosyncratic and fantastic and fucking alive. Instead we feed ourselves and our children and our children’s children prosaic fuckery for what? Respectability politics? So that if we twist and try our damnedest to conform to standards that have never been coded into our collective DNA, that we’ll what? Somehow be less strange? Less weird and wonderful? That we’ll transcend the soul-snuffing snare that is the myth of the good immigrant? That if we mute all of our magic—everything that makes us some of the most innately interesting, individualistic and fun, funny beings in this boring, beige-as-fuck world—that we’ll win over whom? Folks who don’t season their food right or whose understanding of freedom is a shitty Friday night sloshfest at a shitty pub playing shitty music, chatting nonsense that no-one with a single iota of sense gives a fuck about? Is that who you are so deeply invested in trying to impress? If so, then go for it, but don’t fool yourself for a fucking second into thinking that trying desperately to shave off your elemental peculiarities through self-diminishment is salvation, because it simply isn’t, honey, and it never will be.”
― Diriye Osman

“Happiness is wildly indiscreet vibrators that make your whole clapped-out building quake and Jill Scott sex jams and Judd Apatow comedies set in L.A, preferably featuring Leslie Mann. Yes! Happiness is Leslie Mann because she's joyful and she always laughs like she's got an abundance of delightful secrets.”
― Diriye Osman

“Happiness is not lame sex with diseased dickheads from the internet with no social or sexual charisma, whose entire personality is PureGym, and then finding yourself constantly dashing off to 56 Dean Street to make sure you haven't contracted chlamydia or worse. Happiness is not the School of Oriental and African Studies, or the Royal African Society, or any Africanists and Orientalists who schlep to cities like Kolkata and Kampala, and find endlessly inventive ways to weaponise their whiteness by explaining decolonisation to folks their own ancestors are still fucking over from beyond the grave.”
― Diriye Osman

“Happiness is not spending a single second reading endless—and I mean, endless—shitposts in 'The Guardian' masquerading as reportage about the kind of very, very boring morons you actively go out of your way to never meet. Happiness is The Wellcome Collection, but never the Hayward. Happiness is Kylie Minogue and Graham Norton because they're both dope, but not Dua Lipa or Calvin Harris because even though they both seem to be everywhere, all the time, I swear I cannot for the life of me name a single song of theirs.”
― Diriye Osman

“Happiness is day drinking in the middle of Oxford Street whilst dancing to Megan Thee Stallion on a busy weekend after having mixed up all your meds because surprises are fun, and sometimes it's important to be reminded of why you first moved to this weirdly wonderful, obscenely overpriced city. That is happiness and you don't need a therapist or a witchy, wasted transwoman to tell you that shit. Invest in a bombass vibrator, be nice to sweet old ladies on the tube because if you're really lucky, you too will one day grow old and you'll want someone to treat you with a modicum of kindness and care. And stop making yourself go grey with needless stress! Now get the fuck out of my house. You're starting to harsh my buzz.”
― Diriye Osman

“She put in the work every day. Gently pouring cups of love into herself. She made sure that no one would dare enter her oasis without approval. An oasis that was unlike any other.”
― Emir Darlov

“Be careful though", I said, "You don't want to accidentally manifest a set of events that could cause disruptions in your life".”
― Emir Darlov, We're Not Just Neighbours: A play by Emir Darlov

“Be careful though, I said, you don't want to accidentally manifest a set of events that could cause disruptions in your life...”
― Emir Darlov

“You really weren't there, were you? It's unfortunate that I only noticed this now. That in actual reality, your existence was merely a hallucination. A figment of an imagination that was slowly eating itself alive. My imagination...”
― Emir Darlov, It's Just The Two Of Us Now: An Emir’s Oasis play by Emir Darlov

“I pitied her, because she was all alone in a world full of people fixated on her, and that must be the loneliest place on Earth to be.”
― Emir Darlov, It's Just The Two Of Us Now: An Emir’s Oasis play by Emir Darlov

“Which begs the question, who are you when you aren't putting on a show for everyone?”
― Emir Darlov, It's Just The Two Of Us Now: An Emir’s Oasis play by Emir Darlov

“I needed you to think that you had me, and that you'd won me over. So that right when you think you've won, I pull back completely, and leave you wanting more.”
― Emir Darlov , It's Just The Two Of Us Now: An Emir’s Oasis play by Emir Darlov