And I believe that it becomes a troubled continent because there are those who must always cause confusion so that we do not keep these natural resources.

I look at the past and I see myself.

For instance, we're always fighting amongst each other. Who gives us the arms? And then we become indebted to wherever we are buying them from - with what? The very resources we need to keep there.

I'm not a politician; I am a singer. Long ago, they said, 'That one, she sings politics.' I don't sing politics; I merely sing the truth.

You are damned and praised, or encouraged or discouraged by those who listen to you, and those who come to applaud you. And to me, those people are very important.

In the West the past is like a dead animal. It is a carcass picked at by the flies that call themselves historians and biographers. But in my culture the past lives. My people feel this way in part because death does not separate us from our ancestors.

In the mind, in the heart, I was always home. I always imagined, really, going back home.