One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.

They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.

If someone said, I want to translate your novel into Igbo, I would say, Go ahead. But when I write in the Igbo language, I write my own dialect. I write some poetry in that dialect.

It has always been quite apparent to me that no important story can fail to tell us something of value to us.

When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?

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.

A good leader for instance is somebody like Nelson Mandela. I do not have seen such people coming every generation, maybe every ten generations, every hundred generations. People who are miracle workers.