There is a certain increase in the importance I assign to women in getting us out of the mess that we are in, which is a reflection of the role of women in my traditional culture - that they do not interfere in politics until men really make such a mess that the society is unable to go backward or forward. Then women will move in.

An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb

I think once you have done all you can to a manuscript, let it find its way in the world.

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.

People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.

There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.

What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.