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

We don't want to be simply wandering about without some kind of reason, we want our presence here to have a purpose, and that we are not going to end here, we are going to proceed somewhere else, and also that we didn't begin here, that we began somewhere else and all that living, all that elaborate account of our presence seems to be quite basic to our nature and so this is what literacy taps into.

I'm sure if one turned one's mind back from grandiose faults to what is happening to the average man or woman or child in the rural areas, we will probably find that's where the energy for development is.

Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.

Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache

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.

People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them. This is what people have come to expect. Its not viewed as a serious continent. Its a place of strange, bizarre and illogical things, where people dont do what common sense demands.