I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.

Every Day Is for the Thief, by turns funny, mournful, and acerbic, offers a portrait of Nigeria in which anger, perhaps the most natural response to the often lamentable state of affairs there, is somehow muted and deflected by the author's deep engagement with the country: a profoundly disenchanted love. Teju Cole is among the most gifted writers of his generation.

Terror is glamour - not only, but also. I am firmly convinced that there's something like a fascination with death among suicide bombers.

The interesting thing about history sometimes. is that you know these people existed, and you knew what jobs they did, but you don't know much about them as people, so you actually have to make them up.

My horizon's have shrunk and I have only endings to write.

The glamour of being forbidden must not be underestimated.

An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship - it is a crime against our nature as human beings.