Only Esmeralda was not weeping. Instead she wore that wooden look that whites mistake for churlishenss or indifference. Woodrew knew it was neither. It was familiarity. This how real life is constituted, it said. This is grief and hatred and people hacked to death. This is the everyday we have known since we were born and you Wazungu have not.

The only reward for love is the experience of loving.

I happen to write by hand. I don't even type.

There is a terrible alienation in the ordinary man between what he is being told and what he secretly believes.

By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.

When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous.