The white man has settled like a locust over Africa, and, like the locusts in early morning, cannot take flight for the heaviness of the dew on their wings. But the dew that weights the white man is the money that he makes from our labor.

Africa gives you the knowledge that man is a small creature, among other creatures, in a large landscape.

It usually takes me a year to do a book. A year or eighteen months.

Women often get dropped from memory, and then history.

The youth do not see the old. They are not programmed to see the old, who are cancelled, negated, wiped out.

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how.

Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.