“But a Congolese life is like the useless Congolese bill, which you can pile by the fistful or the bucketful into a merchant's hand, and still not purchase a single banana. It's dawning on me that I live among men and women who've simply always understood their whole existence is worth less than a banana to most white people. I see it in their eyes when they glance up at me.”

“I banana the softest banana in the world; it's a new game, seeing just how soft I can banana while still banana-ing.”

“Victor Vigny: A monkey glances up and sees a banana, and that's as far as he looks. A visionary looks up and sees the moon.Conor Broekhart: Which resembles a giant banana.”

“The sting of a fly, the Congolese say, can launch the end of the world. How simply things begin.”

“The common approach is, metaphorically speaking, to go out onto the sidewalk and to pick up all the banana skins, so that no one slips. Me, I go down early in the morning and drop more banana skins. People say, ‘Well, why would you be doing that?’ And I tell them, ‘Teaching is not about trying to prevent people from falling down, it’s about trying to get them to use their eyes.’ If you take the banana skins away, you’re saying that life is banana-skin free. Well, it is not. Life is full of banana skins.I try to teach people to use their eyes, to look where they’re stepping. It’s my responsibility to respect people, to help them learn the lessons life teaches. When you slip on a banana skin and fall down, discuss what happened and learn from it. I think that it is actually unwise to get in between people and what life is trying to teach them, but we all have a responsibility for each other.”

“When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it's your laugh.”