I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.

I'm amazed when I think about students today. They know from day one what they are going to be. We didn't. We just coasted. We just knew that things would work out.

The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.

If one finger brings oil it soils the others.

A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.

It is not quite true to say that I am not an advocate of writing in African languages. What I think is, one has to think about what is practicable.

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.