When you leave Africa, as the plane lifts, you feel that more than leaving a continent you're leaving a state of mind. Whatever awaits you at the other end of your journey will be of a different order of existence.

I had fallen out of my secure world, precipitated beyond the territories I had only begun to control so skillfully. What a foolish step to take. What an insane move to make.

No use crying over spilled milk.

When people die and especially when they die tragically, others can't help but get carried away. They come up with their implausible interpretation and usually resort to cheap psychology. A sense of fatalism is the only form of relief left.

Children know so little, they must learn quickly to imitate grown-ups whenever they feel unsure in a situation.

Why is it you can never hope to describe the emotion Africa creates? You are lifted. Out of whatever pit, unbound from whatever tie, released from whatever fear. You are lifted and you see it all from above.

Maybe that's what happens with age, I thought. All your life you force yourself to forget people who have hurt you, but as you get older and weaker their memory surfaces again, like a bubble in the water. You have to surrender, because you feel to tired to fight it and push it down again. And maybe, unexpectedly, you find out that instead, of revamping your anger, those memories produce an unexpected sweetness.