Honesty. And I just really think there's a fundamental friendship that needs to exist, whether it's a lover, whether it's a sister...there's just this connection both people need to be effortlessly themselves.

There are people who dislike you because you do not dislike yourself.

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.

She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself.

I can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my own life in my fiction.

They themselves mocked Africa, trading stories of absurdity, of stupidity, and they felt safe to mock, because it was a mockery born of longing, and of the heartbroken desire to see a place made whole again.

If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices.