The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.

What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.

Don't read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later, cautiously.

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

The acknowledged legislators of the world take the world as given. They dislike mysteries, for mysteries cannot be coded, or legislated, and wonder cannot be made into law. And so these legislators police the accepted frontiers of things.

An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.

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