Many writers can't make a living. So to be able to teach how to write is valuable to them. But I don't really know about its value to the student. I don't mean it's useless. But I wouldn't have wanted anyone to teach me how to write.

It is praiseworthy to be brave and fearless, but sometimes it is better to be a coward. We often stand in the compound of a coward to point at the ruins where a brave man used to live.

Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagine they have made in their existing journey thorough the world.

The ordinary Nigerians have lived as neighbors down the millennia. I was talking about the British who came and merged a whole number of mini states and big states into one unit. But those people were always there, and they always managed to live side by side with their neighbours. So they were not owned or run by one kingdom. It was not practically impossible for these people when they have different languages and religions to be neighbors. So it is that habit of neighbourliness which is destroyed and put under great strain again and again when you have things like massacres.

Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.

That we are surrounded by deep mysteries is known to all but the incurably ignorant.

When I think of the standing, the importance and the erudition of all these people who see nothing about racism in Heart of Darkness, I'm convinced that we must really be living in different worlds.