Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.

Unless I'm writing in the Igbo language, I use a language developed elsewhere, which is English. That affects the way I write. It even affects to some extent the stories I write.

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

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

If one finger brings oil it soils the others.

Mosquito [...] had asked Ear to marry him, whereupon Ear fell on the floor in uncontrollable laughter. "How much longer do you think you will live?" she asked. "You are already a skeleton." Mosquito went away humiliated, and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still alive.

Generally, I don't attempt to produce a certain number of words a day. The discipline is to work whether you are producing a lot or not, because the day you produce a lot is not necessarily the day you do your best work. So it's trying to do it as regularly as you can without making it - without imposing too rigid a timetable on your self. That would be my ideal.