You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.

About 52% of the world's population is female. But most of the positions of power and prestige are occupied by men. The late Kenyan Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai put it simply and well when she said 'The higher you go, the fewer women there are.'

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.

At about the age of seven … I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading: All my characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, and they talked a lot about the weather: how lovely it was that the sun had come out. This despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria; we didn’t have snow, we ate mangoes, and we never talked about the weather, because there was no need to.

Death would be a complete knowingness, but what frightened him was this: not knowing beforehand what it was he would know.

I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is obvious to everyone else.

Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing.