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.

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

How can I come from a nation? How can a human being come from a concept?

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

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

I'm not sure where I'm from! I was born in London. My father's from Ghana but lives in Saudi Arabia. My mother's Nigerian but lives in Ghana. I grew up in Boston.

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.