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.

What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing.

We live in a sea of general ideas, so that's not a novel, since there are so many general ideas. But the moment a particular idea is linked to a character, it's like an engine moves it. Then you have a novel underway.

My son even if you want to fall, at least fall where your bones can be gathered

One would think he never sucked at his mother’s breast.

I know that an important message is not a novel. To say that we should all be kind to our neighbors is an important statement; it's not a novel.

I try as hard as possible not to be pessimistic because I have never thought or believed that creating a Nigerian nation would be easy; I have always known that it was going to be a very tough job. But I never really thought that it would be this tough. And what's going on now, which is a subjection of this potentially great country to a clique of military adventurers and a political class that they have completely corrupted - this is really quite appalling. The suffering that they have unleashed on millions of people is quite intolerable.