Maybe he's been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them.

It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.

My life is a pitiful, mechanical thing without a past, like a little wind-up car, ready to run in any direction someone points me.

In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.