I like the U.S. and feel gratitude towards it.

Your life belongs to you and you alone.

Each time he suggested they get married, she said no. They were too happy, precariously so, and she wanted to guard that bond; she feared that marriage would flatten it into a prosaic partnership.

In primary school in south-eastern Nigeria, I was taught that Hosni Mubarak was the president of Egypt. I learned the same thing in secondary school. In university, Mubarak was still president of Egypt. I came to assume, subconsciously, that he - and others like Paul Biya in Cameroon and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya - would never leave.

There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable.

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

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