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.

When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.

What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?

Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.

I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6, but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.

We lie to one another every day, in the sweetest way, often unconsciously. We dress ourselves and compose ourselves in order to present ourselves to one another.

The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.