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.

A story is how we construct our experiences.

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness.

Is there any delight as great as the child's discovering ability?

What matters most is that we learn from living.

Anna, there's something very arrogant about insisting on the right to be right.

But it isn't only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It's more than that. People know they are in a society dead or dying. They are refusing emotion because at the end of very emotion are property, money, power. They work and despise their work, and so freeze themselves. They love but know that it's a half- love or a twisted love, and so they freeze themselves.