A man's greatest battles are the ones he fights within himself.

To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.

I was born left-handed, but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road,' which was very long, I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed, so I started using my left hand. The prose I wrote with my left hand came out denser, so later on I had to change it.

The greatest religions convert the world through stories.

It is not important for me as a writer that you leave a piece of writing of mine with either an agreement or even a resonance with what I have said. What is important is that you leave with the resonance of what you have felt and what you thought in reaction to that.

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

We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.