The big ideas always come in flashes. I don't really craft stories that much. I genuinely don't know where these people come from and I've often wondered if writing is just a socially acceptable form of madness.

So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual.

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.

I was four when I announced my ambition to write, eight when I began publishing such claims.

I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.

When I'm working, I'm so narrowly focused on sound, language, rhythm, flow, that I rarely feel the emotion of the text. It's only after - long after - I've finished a piece that I can experience in any way its emotional charge.

When writing screenplays, it's a matter of remembering to leave off the page anything and everything that doesn't appear on the screen.