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.

What a man does not know is greater than he.

If you don't like someone's story, write your own. If you don't like what somebody says, say what it is you don't like.

I have found that I work best when I am at home in Nigeria. But one learns to work in other places.

There are things the story must have or else look incomplete. And these will almost automatically present themselves. When they don't, you are in trouble and then the novel stops.

I think the language that we use in dealing with one another is very important. And even if I am called upon to bring out some money to support a regime, and I am entitled to say I do not like what that regime does and obviously I am not going to put money there - you cannot really say this is wrong or this is unreasonable.

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.