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.

...there was cement in her soul. It had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, shapeless desires, brief imaginary glints of other lives she could be living, that over the months melded into a piercing homesickness.

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.

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.

Your life belongs to you and you alone.

Our histories cling to us. We are shaped by where we come from.

I’m very feminist in the way I look at the world, and that worldview must somehow be part of my work.