The Igbo used to say that they built their own gods. They would come together as a community, and they would express a wish. And their wish would then be brought to a priest, who would find a ritual object, and the appropriate sacrifices would be made, and the shrine would be built for the god.

What I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion.

Much of the image of the amazingness of America comes from the movies into other cultures. And it's much the same thing when you reverse it. Much of Africa is presented through poverty, through drought and war. [But] you're not presenting people, you're not presenting countries, you're not presenting complexity, and so people can't care about an amorphous mass called Africa.

Before you speak, my friend, remember, a spiritual man contain his anger. Angry words are like slap in de face.

I have not spoken in three years: not since I left boot camp. It has been three years of a senseless war, and though the reasons for it are clear, and though we will continue to fight until we are ordered to stop--and probably for a while after that--none of us can remember the hate that led us here. We are simply fighting to survive the war. It is a strange place to be at fifteen, bereft of hope and very nearly of your humanity. But that is where I am nonetheless.

As with much of the world's problems, they become public--or much more of interest--the moment they begin to impact the West.

Your anatomy is a mystery that nobody bothers explaining to us. Even when we think we have mastered one woman's body, every body is different.