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.

We live in a sea of general ideas, so that's not a novel, since there are so many general ideas. But the moment a particular idea is linked to a character, it's like an engine moves it. Then you have a novel underway.

As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.

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.

Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too – If one says no to the other, let his wing break.

The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a resonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: `The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.'

People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.