When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.

There is no story that is not true.

As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.

One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.

The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a resonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: `The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.'

They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.