Writing is like wrestling; you are wrestling with ideas and with the story. There is a lot of energy required. At the same time, it is exciting. So it is both difficult and easy. What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing. I have said in the kind of exaggerated manner of writers and prophets that writing, for me, is like receiving a term of imprisonment-you know that's what you're in for, for whatever time it takes.

People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.

Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.

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

I have found that I work best when I am at home in Nigeria. But one learns to work in other places.

When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk

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.