When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about it, not when it's around your neck.

Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.

I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.

Nigera is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.

When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.