As a writer, one is obliged to release her words, to let them live in the world on their own.

The thing that comes most frequently to me on yoga retreats is excruciating pain in my hips.

As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.

I wouldn't mind my book being called an African novel if it didn't invite lazy readings.

I live in Rome and five minutes from my flat is a church where you can walk in and see this beautiful Caravaggio. Just the way this man uses dark paint: dark to create dark to create dark, the layering of the darkness in his work. I just race home: I want to create!

As a young woman, I had been seeking experience, knowledge, truth, the stuff writers need in their work, but when the artist actually kicked in, I came to understand that in this romantic relationship I was not free to be myself, or to find myself, in order to begin the true work I needed to do.

As a writer, one is obliged to release her words, to let them live in the world on their own.