I read recently that the problem with stereotypes isn't that they are inaccurate, but that they're incomplete. And this captures perfectly what I think about contemporary African literature. The problem isn't that it's inaccurate, it's that it's incomplete.

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.

The writer presents himself to the blank page not with an open passport but an open heart.

I wrote fiction during my entire childhood, from age 4 to 18, and started writing plays when I went to Yale and Oxford.

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

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.

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