...Nothing puzzles God

But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry.

When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.

Serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict.

The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.

When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.

Each of my books is different. Deliberately... I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.