A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.

I am not fighting for success, just to get more beauty out of myself and share it with more people.

When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.

A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.

The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.

Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a train, people that don’t exist, places you’ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader’s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.

I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.