People have crushes on priests all the time, you know. It’s exciting to have to deal with God as a rival.

Red was the blood of the siblings massacred in the North, black was for mourning them, green was for the prosperity Biafra would have, and, finally, the half of a yellow sun stood for the glorious future.

Culture does not make people. People make culture.

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

I am a strong believer in the ability of human beings to change for the better. I am a strong believer in trying to change what we are dissatisfied with.

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. With him, she was at ease; her skin felt as though it was her right size.. It seemed so natural, to talk to him about odd things. She had never done that before. The trust, so sudden and yet so complete, and the intimacy, frightened her.. But now she could think only of all the things she yet wanted to tell him, wanted to do with him.

There has always been a strange dissonance between the public and the private in Nigeria.