I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married.

You know, when I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires.

I wasn't an active feminist in the '60s, never have been.

Writers brought up in Africa have many advantages - being at the center of a modern battlefield; part of a society in rapid, dramatic change. But in a long run it can also be a handicap: to wake up every morning with one's eyes on a fresh evidence of inhumanity; to be reminded twenty times a day of injustice, and always the same brand of it, can be limiting.

America can be a very hysterical country intellectually and very puritanical, too. You probably have fun in private, but to the rest of the world you seem to hate fun - to be big on agendas and short on spontaneity. The image you present is one of appalling conformity. The thought police is what you are ruled by.

Men are restless, adventurous. Women are conservative - despite what current ideology says.

If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.