It is my belief that children are full of understanding and know as much as and more than adults, until they are about seven, when they suddenly become stupid, like adults.

A woman writer, quitting love before literature when love lets her down, will put literature before love.

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.

What women will say to other women grumbling in their kitchens and complaining and gossiping or what they make clear in their masochism is often the last thing they will say aloud - a man may overhear. Women are the cowards they are because they have been semi-slaves for so long.

People are just cannibals unless they leave each other alone.

None of you [men] ask for anything - except everything, but just for so long as you need it.

Mother's room, and mother's need for privacy become a valuable lesson in respect for other people's rights.