What hope is there for individual reality or authenticity when the forces of violence and orthodoxy, the earthly powers of guns and bombs and manipulated public opinion make it impossible for us to be authentic and fulfilled human beings? The only hope is in the creation of alternative values, alternative realities. The only hope is in daring to redream one's place in the world - a beautiful act of imagination, and a sustained act of self becoming. Which is to say that in some way or another we breach and confound the accepted frontiers of things.

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

I learned that life will go through changes - up and down and up again. It's what life does.

The earliest storytellers were magi, seers, bards, griots, shamans. They were, it would seem, old as time, and as terrifying to gaze upon as the mysteries with which they wrestled .. (they) helped the community live though one more darkness, with eyes wide open, and with hearts set alight.

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

The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.

This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.