Best 25 quotes of Emmanuel Jal on MyQuotes

A cold heart is my protection mechanism. I don't really feel anything for anyone.

A lot of child soldiers lose their minds.

Any child soldier has to go through a lot of love, care and understanding to become normal.

[During the second Sudanese Civil War] what was actually killing us wasn't the Muslims, wasn't the Arabs. It was somebody sitting somewhere manipulating the system, and using religion to get what they want to get out of us, which is the oil, the diamond, the gold and the land.

I am proof that one person can rise above any challenge, and if I can, then so will others if they are given the chance.

I don't know anywhere where the people are hungrier for education than South Sudan.

I don't take modern hip-hop as real. It's entertaining, it's fake, like James Bond.

If I sleep for more than half an hour, I get horrible dreams in which I'm firing a gun and helicopters are coming down.

I grew up in poverty. For 25 years I was fed on aid.

I lost my childhood. I didn't play football or video games. Or have birthdays or the love of a family.

I'm constantly seen as a 'foreigner,' and I need my passport to prove my identity, to keep moving and to carry on my work.

I'm rapping in English but in an African way. I'm not trying to sound like an American.

I'm still a soldier, fighting with my pen and paper for peace till the day I cease.

In Africa, you know, if you're poor, at least you can go to the forest and share some mangoes with the gorillas and monkey.

I still have nightmares of dead comrades, a long time ago, talking to me. 'Emmanuel, don't forget about us, don't give up, keep telling our story.'

It’s no longer about the Lost Boys. They keep trying to make their way out, then they meet other people and empathize with them. It’s a story that a lot of people are going to discover their purpose from. When someone doesn’t know their purpose, they get lost.

Knife crime and gun crime is poverty-driven, and poverty leads to insecurity.

Music is powerful. It is the only thing that can speak into your mind, your heart and your soul without your permission.

Only a coward will use a gun to protect and get respect for themselves.

Peace may be negotiated by politicians, but it is something written in hearts and minds not on pieces of paper

Sometimes words are not needed, and the simplicity of expressing yourself through an art form is one of the best ways of communication.

The worst people on earth are not only those who commit evil, but those who stand by and turn a blind eye

When I was in south Sudan, people used to rap in my village. But the rapping was more in the mother tongue, Nuer.

When people know you've been a soldier, they judge you: you are a thief, a lost boy.

I had thought about forgiveness more and more...I knew it wasn't a light that could be switched on in an instant-it grew day by day, week by week, month by month-but something was changing inside me now during the hours when I sat alone and tried to calm my feelings. A seed had been sown, and I sensed that, just as I'd once faced a choice about whether to use violence on the night when I stared at the gun, I know had another choice: to remain trapped in the bitterness of the past or to find peace in the present.