Time is the element that controls the consciousness, the very being of the people.

The past is a room full of baggage and rubbish and sometimes things that are of use, but if they are of real use, I have kept them.

On their way to freedom, some people find riches, some people find death.

...yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present.

The space between the idea of something and its reality is always wide and deep and dark. The longer they are kept apart—idea of thing, reality of thing—the wider the width, the deeper the depth, the thicker and darker the darkness.

People think if you describe someone with glistening brown skin you're writing about race, as if the whole of the African diaspora is in someone's brown skin.

The inevitable is no less a shock just because it is inevitable.