The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.

A budding writer wants to be encouraged.

I know that an important message is not a novel. To say that we should all be kind to our neighbors is an important statement; it's not a novel.

People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about it, not when it's around your neck.

The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.

The Novelist As Teacher”: “I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past – with all its imperfections – was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them.

A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing